Before Uarda left the Egyptian camp, Pentaur came to entreat her to afford her dying preserver Nebsecht the last happiness of seeing her once more; Uarda acceded with a blush, and the poet, who had watched all night by his friend, went forward to prepare him for her visit.

Nebsecht’s burns and a severe wound on his head caused him great suffering; his cheeks glowed with fever, and the physicians told Pentaur that he probably could not live more than a few hours.

The poet laid his cool hand on his friend’s brow, and spoke to him encouragingly; but Nebsecht smiled at his words with the peculiar expression of a man who knows that his end is near, and said in a low voice and with a visible effort: 

“A few breaths more and here, and here, will be peace.”  He laid his hand on his head and on his heart.

“We all attain to peace,” said Pentaur.  “But perhaps only to labor more earnestly and unweariedly in the land beyond the grave.  If the Gods reward any thing it is the honest struggle, the earnest seeking after truth; if any spirit can be made one with the great Soul of the world it will be yours, and if any eye may see the Godhead through the veil which here shrouds the mystery of His existence yours will have earned the privilege.”

“I have pushed and pulled,” sighed Nebsecht, “with all my might, and now when I thought I had caught a glimpse of the truth the heavy fist of death comes down upon me and shuts my eyes.  What good will it do me to see with the eye of the Divinity or to share in his omniscience?  It is not seeing, it is seeking that is delightful—­so delightful that I would willingly set my life there against another life here for the sake of it.”  He was silent, for his strength failed, and Pentaur begged him to keep quiet, and to occupy his mind in recalling all the hours of joy which life had given him.

“They have been few,” said the leech.  “When my mother kissed me and gave me dates, when I could work and observe in peace, when you opened my eyes to the beautiful world of poetry—­that was good!”

And you have soothed the sufferings of many men, added Pentaur, “and never caused pain to any one.”

Nebsecht shook his head.

“I drove the old paraschites,” he muttered, “to madness and to death.”

He was silent for a long time, then he looked up eagerly and said:  “But not intentionally—­and not in vain!  In Syria, at Megiddo I could work undisturbed; now I know what the organ is that thinks.  The heart!  What is the heart?  A ram’s heart or a man’s heart, they serve the same end; they turn the wheel of animal life, they both beat quicker in terror or in joy, for we feel fear or pleasure just as animals do.  But Thought, the divine power that flies to the infinite, and enables us to form and prove our opinions, has its seat here—­Here in the brain, behind the brow.”

He paused exhausted and overcome with pain.  Pentaur thought he was wandering in his fever, and offered him a cooling drink while two physicians walked round his bed singing litanies; then, as Nebsecht raised himself in bed with renewed energy, the poet said to him: