aspect betokened the fervor and passion of his temperament, and the
intellectual portion of his nature seemed, by the wild fire of the eyes,
the great breadth of the temples when compared with the height of the
brow, the trembling restlessness of the lips, to be swayed and
tyrannized over by the imaginative and ideal. Fancy, with the sister,
had stopped short at the golden goal of poetry; with the brother, less
happy and less restrained, it had wandered into visions more intangible
and unembodied; and the faculties which gave genius to the one
threatened madness to the other.

'You say I have been your enemy,' said Arbaces, 'I know the cause of
that unjust accusation: I have placed you amidst the priests of
Isis--you are revolted at their trickeries and imposture--you think that
I too have deceived you--the purity of your mind is offended--you
imagine that I am one of the deceitful...'

'You knew the jugglings of that impious craft,' answered Apaecides; 'why
did you disguise them from me?--When you excited my desire to devote
myself to the office whose garb I bear, you spoke to me of the holy life
of men resigning themselves to knowledge--you have given me for
companions an ignorant and sensual herd, who have no knowledge but that
of the grossest frauds; you spoke to me of men sacrificing the earthlier
pleasures to the sublime cultivation of virtue--you place me amongst men
reeking with all the filthiness of vice; you spoke to me of the friends,
the enlighteners of our common kind--I see but their cheats and
deluders! Oh! it was basely done!--you have robbed me of the glory of
youth, of the convictions of virtue, of the sanctifying thirst after
wisdom. Young as I was, rich, fervent, the sunny pleasures of earth
before me, I resigned all without a sign, nay, with happiness and
exultation, in the thought that I resigned them for the abstruse