Nefert's love--perhaps too for her own.

Nebsecht kept modestly in the background. The headache, from which he
had long been suffering, had disappeared in the fresh mountain air.
When Pentaur offered him his hand he exclaimed:

"Here is an end to all my jokes and abuse! A strange thing is this fate
of men. Henceforth I shall always have the worst of it in any dispute
with you, for all the discords of your life have been very prettily
resolved by the great master of harmony, to whom you pray."

"You speak almost as if you were sorry; but every thing will turn out
happily for you too."

"Hardly!" replied the surgeon, "for now I see it clearly. Every man is
a separate instrument, formed even before his birth, in an occult
workshop, of good or bad wood, skilfully or unskilfully made, of this
shape or the other; every thing in his life, no matter what we call it,
plays upon him, and the instrument sounds for good or evil, as it is well
or ill made. You are an AEolian harp--the sound is delightful, whatever
breath of fate may touch it; I am a weather-cock--I turn whichever way
the wind blows, and try to point right, but at the same time I creak, so
that it hurts my own ears and those of other people. I am content if now
and then a steersman may set his sails rightly by my indication; though
after all, it is all the same to me. I will turn round and round,
whether others look at me or no--What does it signify?"

When Pentaur and the princess took leave of the hunter with many gifts,
the sun was sinking, and the toothed peaks of Sinai glowed like rubies,
through which shone the glow of half a world on fire.