"Something like the blind Resu then," said Pentaur smiling, "who understood painting better than all the painters who could see."
"In my operations there is a 'better' and a 'worse;'" said Nebsecht, "but there is nothing 'good.'"
"Then we must be satisfied with the 'better,' and I have come to claim it," said Pentaur.
"Are you ill?"
"Isis be praised, I feel so well that I could uproot a palm-tree, but I would ask you to visit a sick girl. The princess Bent-Anat--"
"The royal family has its own physicians."
"Let me speak! the princess Bent-Anat has run over a young girl, and the poor child is seriously hurt."
"Indeed," said the student reflectively. "Is she over there in the city, or here in the Necropolis?"
"Here. She is in fact the daughter of a paraschites."
"Of a paraschites?" exclaimed Nebsecht, once more slipping the rabbit under the table, "then I will go."
"You curious fellow. I believe you expect to find something strange among the unclean folk."
"That is my affair; but I will go. What is the man's name?"
"Pinem."
"There will be nothing to be done with him," muttered the student, "however--who knows?"
With these words he rose, and opening a tightly closed flask he dropped some strychnine on the nose and in the mouth of the rabbit, which immediately ceased to breathe. Then he laid it in a box and said, "I am ready."
"But you cannot go out of doors in this stained dress."
The physician nodded assent, and took from a chest a clean robe, which he was about to throw on over the other! but Pentaur hindered him. "First take off your working dress," he said laughing. "I will help you. But, by Besa, you have as many coats as an onion."
[Besa, the god of the toilet of the Egyptians. He was represented as a deformed pigmy. He led the women to conquest in love, and the men in war. He was probably of Arab origin.] Pentaur was known as a mighty laugher among his companions, and his loud voice rung in the quiet room, when he discovered that his friend was about to put a third clean robe over two dirty ones, and wear no less than three dresses at once.
Nebsecht laughed too, and said, "Now I know why my clothes were so heavy, and felt so intolerably hot at noon. While I get rid of my superfluous clothing, will you go and ask the high-priest if I have leave to quit the temple."