"O Persephone, all that is beautiful descends to thee, never to return!"
(_Even while she speaks, her companions lift the dead, to place him within the sepulchre. He remains in their hands! It was only a waxen corpse._
_Wherefore Anthony feels something resembling relief._
_All vanish;--and the hut, the rocks, and the cross reappear._
_But upon the other side of the Nile, Anthony beholds a Woman, standing in the midst of the desert._
_She retains in her hand the lower part of a long black veil that hides all her face; supporting with her left arm a little child to whom she is giving suck. A great ape crouches down in the sand beside her._
_She uplifts her head toward heaven; and in spite of the great distance, her voice is distinctly heard_:)
ISIS. "O Neith, Beginning of all things! Ammon, Lord of Eternity; Pthah, demiurgos; Thoth, his intelligence; gods of the Amenthi, particular triads of the Nomes,--falcons in the azure of heaven, sphinxes before the temples, ibises perched between the horns of oxen, planets, constellations, shore, murmurs of the wind, gleams of the light,--tell me where I may find Osiris.
"I have sought him in all the canals and all the lakes--aye, further yet, even to Ph[oe]nician Byblos. Anubis, with ears pricked up, leaped about me, and yelped, and thrust his muzzle searchingly into the tufts of the tamarinds.
"Thanks, good Cynocephalos--thanks to thee!"
(_She gives the ape two or three friendly little taps upon the head._)
"Hideous Typhon, the red-haired slew him, tore him in pieces! We have found all his members. But I have not that which rendered me fecund!"
ANTHONY (_is filled with fury. He casts stones at her, reviles her._)
HILARION. "Nay! respect her! Her religion was the faith of thy fathers!--thou didst wear her amulets when thou wert a child in the cradle!"
ISIS. "In the summers of long ago, the inundation drove the impure beasts into the desert. The dykes were opened, the boats dashed against each other; the panting earth drank the river with the intoxication of joy. Then, O God, with the horns of the bull, thou didst lie upon my breast, and then was heard, the lowings of the Eternal Cow!
"The seasons of sowing and reaping, of threshing and of vintage, followed each other in regular order with the years. In the eternal purity of the nights, broad stars beamed and glowed. The days were bathed in never-varying splendour. Like a royal couple the Sun and the Moon appeared simultaneously, at either end of the horizon.