"No, you wanted to break them but you could not. You know yourself, there is no room for both of you in the world, it is either you or he. If you don't kill him, you will kill yourself."
"Yes, perhaps I will. Or, first him and then myself.... Can one kill the man one loves, father?"
"Yes. To kill the body in order to save the soul."
"Well, that is how it will be with me, or perhaps it will be different: I will kill him not out of love but out of envy. A beggar envies a rich man, a scoundrel envies a noble one, the dead envy the living. Set killed Osiris, his brother, from envy. And how can I help envying him? He is—and I am not: he is alive and I am dead He kills me, he destroys me for ever and ever!"
"Why have you not come before? What have you been doing with him?"
"What have I been doing? I thought I should get the better of him, deceive him, catch him in my net, but instead...."
He broke off and asked, with a wry smile:
"Was it good, father, that Set killed Osiris?"
"Why do you ask? You know yourself: they, the blind puppies, think it was not good. Osiris is life and Set is death for men, but for us, the wise ones, this is not so. The Tormented one torments, the Slain one slays, the Destroyed one destroys the world. Osiris-Amenti is the eternal West, the sun of the dead, the end of the world: he will rise over the world and the sun of the living will be extinguished; the god with an unbeating heart will conquer the world and the heart of the world will cease to beat. He is merciful and he ensnares the world with his mercy as a bird-catcher ensnares a bird. He says 'everlasting life' and, behold, there is everlasting death. Set and Osiris have been struggling since the beginning of the world, but the world does not yet know which of the two shall conquer."
"You speak almost exactly as he does, father! the tiniest hairbreadth divides you from him...."