“And you have already been doing something with it,” said Pentaur, in a tone of friendly vexation.

The leech nodded.  “I have opened him, and examined his heart.’

“You are as much set on hearts as a coquette!” said Pentaur.  “What is become of the human heart that the old paraschites was to get for you?”

Nebsecht related without reserve what the old man had done for him, and said that he had investigated the human heart, and had found nothing in it different from what he had discovered in the heart of beasts.

“But I must see it in connection with the other organs of the human body,” cried he; “and my decision is made.  I shall leave the House of Seti, and ask the kolchytes to take me into their guild.  If it is necessary I will first perform the duties of the lowest paraschites.”

Pentaur pointed out to the leech what a bad exchange he would be making, and at last exclaimed, when Nebsecht eagerly contradicted him, “This dissecting of the heart does not please me.  You say yourself that you learned nothing by it.  Do you still think it a right thing, a fine thing—­or even useful?”

“I do not trouble myself about it,” replied Nebsecht.  “Whether my observations seem good or evil, right or heinous, useful or useless, I want to know how things are, nothing more.”

“And so for mere curiosity,” cried Pentaur, “you would endanger the blissful future of thousands of your fellow-men, take upon yourself the most abject duties, and leave this noble scene of your labors, where we all strive for enlightenment, for inward knowledge and truth.”

The naturalist laughed scornfully; the veins swelled angrily in Pentaur’s forehead, and his voice took a threatening tone as he asked: 

“And do you believe that your finger and your eyes have lighted on the truth, when the noblest souls have striven in vain for thousands of years to find it out?  You descend beneath the level of human understanding by madly wallowing in the mire; and the more clearly you are convinced that you have seized the truth, the more utterly you are involved in the toils of a miserable delusion.”

“If I believed I knew the truth should I so eagerly seek it?” asked Nebsecht.  “The more I observe and learn, the more deeply I feel my want of knowledge and power.”

“That sounds modest enough,” said the poet, “but I know the arrogance to which your labors are leading you.  Everything that you see with your own eyes and touch with your own hand, you think infallible, and everything that escapes your observation you secretly regard as untrue, and pass by with a smile of superiority.  But you cannot carry your experiments beyond the external world, and you forget that there are things which lie in a different realm.”

“I know nothing of those things,” answered Nebsecht quietly.