“Thy hand is hard, Priest, and thy words hit like the strokes of a hammer.  This fair lady is good and loving, and I know; that she did not drive her horse intentionally over this poor girl, who is my grandchild and not my daughter.  If she were thy wife or the wife of the leech there, or the child of the poor woman yonder, who supports life by collecting the feet and feathers of the fowls that are slaughtered for sacrifice, I would not only forgive her, but console her for having made herself like to me; fate would have made her a murderess without any fault of her own, just as it stamped me as unclean while I was still at my mother’s breast.  Aye—­I would comfort her; and yet I am not very sensitive.  Ye holy three of Thebes!—­[The triad of Thebes:  Anion, Muth and Chunsu.]—­how should I be?  Great and small get out of my way that I may not touch them, and every day when I have done what it is my business to do they throw stones at me.

[The paraschites, with an Ethiopian knife, cuts the flesh of the corpse as deeply as the law requires:  but instantly takes to flight, while the relatives of the deceased pursue him with stones, and curses, as if they wished to throw the blame on him.]

“The fulfilment of duty—­which brings a living to other men, which makes their happiness, and at the same time earns them honor, brings me every day fresh disgrace and painful sores.  But I complain to no man, and must forgive—­forgive—­forgive, till at last all that men do to me seems quite natural and unavoidable, and I take it all like the scorching of the sun in summer, and the dust that the west wind blows into my face.  It does not make me happy, but what can I do?  I forgive all—­”

The voice of the paraschites had softened, and Bent-Anat, who looked down on him with emotion, interrupted him, exclaiming with deep feeling: 

“And so you will forgive me?—­poor man!”

The old man looked steadily, not at her, but at Pentaur, while he replied:  “Poor man! aye, truly, poor man.  You have driven me out of the world in which you live, and so I made a world for myself in this hut.  I do not belong to you, and if I forget it, you drive me out as an intruder—­nay as a wolf, who breaks into your fold; but you belong just as little to me, only when you play the wolf and fall upon me, I must bear it!”

“The princess came to your hut as a suppliant, and with the wish of doing you some good,” said Pentaur.

“May the avenging Gods reckon it to her, when they visit on her the crimes of her father against me!  Perhaps it may bring me to prison, but it must come out.  Seven sons were mine, and Rameses took them all from me and sent them to death; the child of the youngest, this girl, the light of my eyes, his daughter has brought to her death.  Three of my boys the king left to die of thirst by the Tenat,