intermission by this sick-bed, and such dreams were the natural
consequence.

Atossa slipped back to her mother. Not a sound broke the sultry air of
the sick-room, and Nebenchiari's thoughts reverted to his dream. He told
himself that he was on the point of becoming a traitor and a criminal,
the visions he had just beheld passed before him again, but this time it
was another, and a different one which gained the foremost place. The
forms of Amasis, who had laughed at and exiled him,--of Psamtik and the
priests,--who had burnt his works,--stood near him; they were heavily
fettered and besought mercy at his hands. His lips moved, but this was
not the place in which to utter the cruel words which rose to them. And
then the stern man wiped away a tear as he remembered the long nights, in
which he had sat with the reed in his hand, by the dull light of the
lamp, carefully painting every sign of the fine hieratic character in
which he committed his ideas and experience to writing. He had
discovered remedies for many diseases of the eye, spoken of in the sacred
books of Thoth and the writings of a famous old physician of Byblos as
incurable, but, knowing that he should be accused of sacrilege by his
colleagues, if he ventured on a correction or improvement of the sacred
writings, he had entitled his work, "Additional writings on the
treatment of diseases of the eye, by the great god Thoth, newly
discovered by the oculist Nebenchari."

He had resolved on bequeathing his works to the library at Thebes, that
his experience might be useful to his successors and bring forth fruit
for the whole body of sufferers. This was to be his reward for the long
nights which he had sacrificed to science--recognition after death, and
fame for the caste to which he belonged. And there stood his old rival
Petammon, by the side of the crown-prince in the grove of Neith, and