The temple and all
that was in it vanished from his sight as from his memory. Swayed by
the dread and supernatural influences of his disease, the madman passed
back in an instant over the dark valley of life's evil pilgrimage to the
long-quitted precincts of his boyish home. While in bodily presence he
stood in the place of his last crimes, the outcast of reason and
humanity, in mental consciousness he lay in his mother's arms, as he had
lain there ere yet he had departed to the temple at Alexandria; and his
heart communed with her heart, and his eyes looked on her as they had
looked before his father's fatal ambition had separated for ever parent
and child!
'Mother!--come back, mother!' he whispered. 'I was not asleep: I saw
you when you came in, and sat by my bedside, and wept over me when you
kissed me! Come back, and sit by me still! I am going away, far away,
and may never hear your voice again! How happy we should be, mother, if
I stayed with you always! But it is my father's will that I should go
to the temple in another country, and live there to be a priest; and his
will must be obeyed.
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