"We thank you for your charming account; but this strange spectacle must
have a higher meaning, and we should thank you doubly if you would
explain that to us."

"Your idea is quite right," answered Darius, "but what I know I dare not
tell. I was obliged to promise Neithotep with an oath, not to tell tales
out of school."

"Shall I tell you," asked Rhodopis, "what conclusions various hints from
Pythagoras and Onuphis have led me to draw, as to the meaning of this
drama? Isis seems to me to represent the bountiful earth; Osiris,
humidity or the Nile, which makes the earth fruitful; Horus, the young
spring; Typhon, the scorching drought. The bounteous earth, robbed of
her productive power, seeks this beloved husband with lamentations in the
cooler regions of the north, where the Nile discharges his waters. At
last Horus, the young springing power of nature, is grown up and conquers
Typhon, or the scorching drought. Osiris, as is the case with the
fruitful principle of nature, was only apparently dead, rises from the
nether regions and once more rules the blessed valley of the Nile, in
concert with his wife, the bounteous earth."

"And as the murdered god behaved properly in the lower regions," said
Zopyrus, laughing, "he is allowed, at the end of this odd story, to
receive homage from the inhabitants of Hamestegan, Duzakh and Gorothman,
or whatever they call these abodes for the Egyptian spirit-host."

"They are called Amenti," said Darius, falling into his friend's merry
mood; but you must know that the history of this divine pair represents
not only the life of nature, but also that of the human soul, which, like