“By Him who is the breath of every living thing, tell me how affliction befell thee?” asked Setos, sitting down on the bed near the foot and searching Orondo’s face anxiously.
“By the only method possible,” answered Orondo. “Because I have violated the laws of harmony.”
“This is bad, very bad! It gives less favored men an excuse to neglect their bodies in an unwarrantable manner,” said Setos, warming up to his favorite theme. “If we could only send out an army to teach the people the possibilities of water, the difference between good and bad food, the necessity for proper rest, the inexorableness of natural laws, disease would become what it was intended to be—a brief, infrequent, reparative process.”
He pursed up his lips and sniffed loudly in self-satisfaction. It was so seldom that he had an opportunity to fittingly repeat this homily.
“I think that our laws are strictly and justly administered in this respect,” ventured Orondo. “The advocates and healers are supported by the state. Self-interest prompts the latter to report disease as they find it. They know enough of law to name the penalty attached to hereditary and contagious diseases. The advocates know enough of healing to detect symptoms of forbidden maladies. It is a capital offense for either party to conceal conditions of this kind. I do not see what more can be done.”
Utter weariness closed Orondo’s eyes for a moment, and Setos refrained from further speech.
“Let kindness of heart prompt thee to fill a pipe for me,” said the patient, presently.
When it was handed to him, he said with a wan smile:
“Let us indulge our nerves with a harmless sedative as a step in the right direction. I shall wait until thy bowl is filled.”
Setos hastened to comply, and after the first three whiffs, which were always silent fire-offerings, said: