think her beautiful! Strange! you must not laugh if I confess--I am but
a man like every one else--when I confess, that I believe I have at
length discovered in myself the missing organ for beauty of form--not
believe merely, but truly have discovered it, for it has not only spoken,
but cried, raged, till I felt a rushing in my ears, and for the first
time was attracted more by the sufferer than by suffering. I have sat in
the hut as though spell-bound, and gazed at her hair, at her eyes, at how
she breathed. They must long since have missed me at the House of Seti,
perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking me in my room! For
two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawn away from my work,
for the sake of this child. Were I one of the laity, whom you would
approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me. But it is not
that,"--and with these words the physician's eyes flamed up--"it is not
that! The animal in me, the low instincts of which the heart is the
organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, they have mastered the
pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; and in the very moment
when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you call the Prince of
knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal in me is stronger
than that which I call my God."

The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the ground
during these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened to him
wondering and full of sympathy. For a time both were silent; then
Pentaur laid his hand on his friend's hand, and said cordially:

"My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I may
use your own words, have known a like emotion. But I know that what we
feel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftier and
more precious than these, not lower. Not the animal, Nebsecht, is it
that you feel in yourself, but God. Goodness is the most beautiful