The travellers had returned to Memphis and Caleb displayed the skin of a lion which had been shot in the desert and told the people in the thalamegus terrible tales of desert ghosts and dread visions. The barge was now gliding up the Nile in the night; the sky was softly blue, like dark byssus; the water was a pale blue, like rippling silk; and the waning moon hung above the palm-clusters and country-mansions on the river-bank like a great, overripe fruit which threatened to burst in the sky and whose juice was already trickling in thick orange drops that flowed far over the Nile.

And, while the rowers’ monotonous chant resounded with the regular beat of the oars, Thrasyllus, sitting beside Lucius, gave way to melancholy and said:

“Egypt is Egypt no longer. Alexandria is a commercial town; Memphis is a decaying greatness; and the priests are venal and no longer know the Hermetic wisdom. I have sought for five days among the dusty papyri of the neglected library in the temple of Ammon; it is as though all that is worth knowing were hiding itself.”

“The priests must be hiding the Hermetic wisdom on purpose,” said Lucius.

“They used to do so in other days for Plato and Pythagoras, when their souls were lofty and incorruptible. Nowadays they show what they have and tell what they know for money. But what they have is not more than we in Rome possess in the temple of Isis; and what they know is not the key to happiness. And yet ... and yet I believe in a sacred word, handed down in the wisdom of the Kabbala by word of mouth, from father to son. But I have not yet received it from any priest, neither at Memphis nor in the oasis. And yet I have hopes. There is Thebes; and there are the secrets of Ethiopia ... down to the pillars of Sesostris.”

Lucius smiled gently:

“The word,” he said, “the secret of happiness ... Thrasyllus, is happiness not an illusion of the brain? Does happiness not lie in resigning one’s self piously to one’s fate and is the secret word not the proud ‘Be a god unto yourself’?”

The old man started. And he whispered:

“You also? Have you also heard that word, as I heard it at Sais? I took no account of it, it did not satisfy me.”

“It satisfied me in the oasis, because it is a proud, strong word and I have needed pride and strength ... since I have known, Thrasyllus.”

“Known what, Lucius?”

“That Carus stole Ilia from me.”

The old man started violently:

“You know?” he exclaimed. “You know? Who told you? Who betrayed the secret?”

“The voice itself within my own soul, which the oracles caused to speak to me. My own thoughts, tossing this way and that, which the oracles guided. From the sibyl of Rhacotis, who merely guessed my own thoughts, down to the old high-priest of Ammon-RÂ, who spoke to me like a father ... and who said to me the word, ‘Be a god unto yourself!’”

“As Nemu-Pha said to me, at Sais. I paid for it in gold.”

“I paid for it in gold in the oasis. But what does that matter, Thrasyllus? The word gave me strength and pride.”

“O my son, if you could be cured of your sorrow, of your grief!”

“They are no longer in me. I no longer have any grief, no longer any sorrow. I am a god unto myself.”

“The gods suffer. Isis suffered because of Osiris. All the gods suffer.”

“I suffer no longer. My grief has departed from me. The world and life are beautiful. See, the colours and the light are beautiful. The sky is softly blue, like dark byssus; the water ripples like blue silk; and the moon is like a great, overripe fruit which bursts in the sky and whose juice trickles over the Nile. To-morrow the day will bring another beauty. In these successive beauties, Thrasyllus, I will be a god unto myself.”

“O my son, though I did not tell you the word myself, I am so happy that you yourself found the word!”

In the night there sounded the high, rising tones of a harp, followed by Cora’s crystal-clear voice, which was accompanied by other harps and other voices.

“The word of pride, the word of strength, Thrasyllus,” said Lucius, calmly; and the old tutor saw a tranquil smile on his young master’s face as he added, “The word that almost makes me happy.”