"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 Phœnician 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!"