Paaker himself returned to the House of Seti, where, in the night which
closed the feast day, there was always a grand banquet for the superior
priests of the Necropolis and of the temples of eastern Thebes, for the
representatives of other foundations, and for select dignitaries of the
state.

His father had never failed to attend this entertainment when he was in
Thebes, but he himself had to-day for the first time received the much-
coveted honor of an invitation, which--Ameni told him when he gave it--he
entirely owed to the Regent.

His mother had tied up his hand, which Rameri had severely hurt; it was
extremely painful, but he would not have missed the banquet at any cost,
although he felt some alarm of the solemn ceremony. His family was as
old as any in Egypt, his blood purer than the king's, and nevertheless he
never felt thoroughly at home in the company of superior people. He was
no priest, although a scribe; he was a warrior, and yet he did not rank
with royal heroes.

He had been brought up to a strict fulfilment of his duty, and he devoted
himself zealously to his calling; but his habits of life were widely
different from those of the society in which he had been brought up--
a society of which his handsome, brave, and magnanimous father had been
a chief ornament. He did not cling covetously to his inherited wealth,
and the noble attribute of liberality was not strange to him, but the
coarseness of his nature showed itself most when he was most lavish, for
he was never tired of exacting gratitude from those whom he had attached
to him by his gifts, and he thought he had earned the right by his
liberality to meet the recipient with roughness or arrogance, according