"The
ritual offends mine ears--my sight, my sense. We have quarreled beyond
any treaty-making--ever."
The other looked at him with amazement and much consternation.
"Art thou mad?" he exclaimed.
"Nay, but I am rebellious--as rebellious as the Israelite, for I have
already shaken my fist in the face of the sculptor's canons. And the
time will come when the world will call my revolt just. I would there
were a chronicler, here, now, to write me down, since I would be
remembered as the pioneer. I shall win no justification, in these days,
perhaps only persecution, but I would reap my reward of honor, though it
be a thousand years in coming."
"Thou hast a grudge against the conventional forms and the rules of the
ritual?" Hotep asked, after a thoughtful silence.
"I have a distaste for the horrors it compels and am ignorant of their
use," Kenkenes answered stubbornly.
"Kenkenes," the scribe began, "Law is a most inexorable thing. It is the
governor of the Infinite. It is a tyrant, which, good or bad, can demand
and enforce obedience to its fiats. It is a capricious thing and it
drags its vassal--the whole created world--after it in its mutations, or
stamps the rebel into the dust while the time-serving obedient ones
applaud.
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