“Yet you have sought to learn those things, O Tanofir, and not in vain.”

“Aye and what have they made of me?  A blind old hermit weighed down with the weight of years and holding in my fingers but some few threads that with pain and grief I have plucked from the fringe of Wisdom’s robe.  Be warned by me, Nephew.  While you are a man, live the life of a man, and when you become a spirit, live the life of a spirit.  But do not seek to mix the two together like oil and wine, and thus spoil both.  I am glad to learn, O Bes, that you are going to make a king’s, or a slave’s wife, whichever it may be, of this maiden, seeing that I love her well and hold this trade unwholesome for her.  She will be better bearing babes than reading visions in a diviner’s cup, and I will pray the gods that they may not be dwarfs as you are, but take on the likeness of their mother, who tells me that she is fair.  Hush! she stirs.

“Karema, are you awake?  Good.  Then lead me from the sepulchre, that I may make my evening prayer beneath the stars.  Go, Shabaka and Bes, you are brave men, both of you, and I am glad to have the one for nephew and the other for pupil.  My greetings to your mother, Tiu.  She is a good woman and a true, one to whom you will do well to hearken.  To the lady Amada also, and bid her study her beauteous face in a mirror and not be holy overmuch, since too great holiness often thwarts itself and ends in trouble for the unholy flesh.  Still she loves pearls like other women, does she not, and even the statue of Isis likes to be adorned.  As for you, Bes, though I think that is not your name, do not lie except when you are obliged, for jugglers who play with too many knives are apt to cut their fingers.  Also give no more evil counsel to your Master on matters that have to do with woman.  Now farewell.  Let me hear how fortune favours you from time to time, Shabaka, for you take part in a great game, such as I loved in my youth before I became a holy hermit.  Oh! if they had listened to me, things would have been different in Egypt to-day.  But it was written otherwise, and as ever, women were the scribes.  Good night, good night, good night!  I am glad that my thought reached you yonder in the East, and taught you what to say and do.  It is well to be wise sometimes, for others’ sake, but not for our own, oh! not for our own.”

“Master,” said Bes as we ambled homewards beneath the stars, “the holy Tanofir is a man for thought to feed on, since having climbed to the topmost peak of holiness, he does not seem to like its cold air and warns off those who would follow in his footsteps.”

“Then he might have spared himself the pains in your case, Bes, or in my own for that matter, since we shall never come so high.”

“No, Master, and I am glad to have his leave to stay lower down, since that hot place of dead bulls is not one which I wish to inhabit in my age, making use of a maiden to stare into a pot of water, and there read marvels, which I could invent better for myself after a jug or two of wine.  Oh! the holy Tanofir is quite right.  If these things are going to happen let them happen, for we cannot change them by knowing of them beforehand.  Who wishes to know, Master, if his throat will be cut?”