"You command here!" said the other. "Let us go." In a few minutes the
priest of Anion and the chief of the kolchytes were being carried towards
the valley in their litters. A taricheut followed them, who sat on a
seat between two asses, and carefully carried a casket of ivory, in which
reposed the ram's heart.

The old paraschites watched the priests disappear behind the tamarisk
bushes. He longed to run after them, and tell them everything.

His conscience quaked with self reproach, and if his sluggish
intelligence did not enable him to take in at a glance all the results
that his deed might entail, he still could guess that he had sown a seed
whence deceit of every kind must grow. He felt as if he had fallen
altogether into sin and falsehood, and that the goddess of truth, whom he
had all his life honestly served, had reproachfully turned her back on
him. After what had happened never could he hope to be pronounced a
"truth-speaker" by the judges of the dead. Lost, thrown away, was the
aim and end of a long life, rich in self-denial and prayer! His soul
shed tears of blood, a wild sighing sounded in his ears, which saddened
his spirit, and when he went back to his work again, and wanted to remove
the soles of the feet

[One of the mummies of Prague which were dissected by Czermak, had
the soles of the feet removed and laid on the breast. We learn from
Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead that this was done that the
sacred floor of the hall of judgment might not be defiled when the
dead were summoned before Osiris.]

from a body, his hand trembled so that he could not hold the knife.