to his humor. Thus it happened that his best actions procured him not
friends but enemies.

Paaker's was, in fact, an ignoble, that is to say, a selfish nature; to
shorten his road he trod down flowers as readily as he marched over the
sand of the desert. This characteristic marked him in all things, even
in his outward demeanor; in the sound of his voice, in his broad
features, in the swaggering gait of his stumpy figure.

In camp he could conduct himself as he pleased; but this was not
permissible in the society of his equals in rank; for this reason, and
because those faculties of quick remark and repartee, which distinguished
them, had been denied to him, he felt uneasy and out of his element when
he mixed with them, and he would hardly have accepted Ameni's invitation,
if it had not so greatly flattered his vanity.

It was already late; but the banquet did not begin till midnight, for the
guests, before it began, assisted at the play which was performed by lamp
and torch-light on the sacred lake in the south of the Necropolis, and
which represented the history of Isis and Osiris.

When he entered the decorated hall in which the tables were prepared, he
found all the guests assembled. The Regent Ani was present, and sat on
Ameni's right at the top of the centre high-table at which several places
were unoccupied; for the prophets and the initiated of the temple of Amon
had excused themselves from being present. They were faithful to Rameses
and his house; their grey-haired Superior disapproved of Ameni's severity
towards the prince and princess, and they regarded the miracle of the
sacred heart as a malicious trick of the chiefs of the Necropolis against
the great temple of the capital for which Rameses had always shown a