"An eyewitness and a trustworthy person," answered he, "told me how ye sacrifice children. Once a storm wrecked a number of tens of your vessels. Immediately the Tyrian priests announced a religious ceremony at which throngs of people collected." The prince spoke with evident indignation. "Before the temple of Baal situated on a lofty place was an immense bronze statue with the head of a bull. Its belly was red hot. At command of your priests the foolish Phœnician mothers put their most beautiful children at the feet of this cruel divinity--" "Only boys," interrupted Hiram. "Only boys," continued Rameses. "The priests sprinkled each boy with perfumes, decked him with flowers, and then the statue seized him with bronze hands, opened its jaws, and devoured the child, whose screams meanwhile were heaven-piercing. Flames burst each time from the mouth of the deity." Hiram laughed in silence. "And dost thou believe this, worthiness?" "I repeat what a man told me who has never lied." "He told what he saw. But did it not surprise him that no mother whose children they burned was weeping?" "He was astonished, indeed, at such indifference in women, since they are always ready to shed tears even over a dead hen. But it shows great cruelty in your people." The old Phœnician nodded. "Was that long ago?" asked he. "A few years." "Well," said Hiram, deliberately, "shouldst thou wish to visit Tyre some day, I shall have the honor to show thee a solemnity like that one." "I have no wish to see it." "After the ceremony we shall go to another court of the temple, where the prince will see a very fine school, and in it, healthy and gladsome, those very same boys who were burnt a few years ago." "How is that?" exclaimed Rameses; "then did they not perish?" "They are living, and growing up to be sturdy mariners. When thou shall be pharaoh,--mayst thou live through eternity!--perhaps more than one of them will be sailing thy ships." "Then ye deceive your people?" laughed the prince. "We deceive no one," answered the Tyrian, with dignity. "Each man deceives himself when he does not seek the explanation of a solemnity which he does not understand." "I am curious," said Rameses. "In fact," continued Hiram, "we have a custom that indigent mothers wishing to assure their sons a good career give them to the service of the state. In reality, those children are taken across the statue of Baal, in which there is a heated stove. This ceremony does not mean that the children are really burnt, but that they have been given to the temple, and so are as much lost to their mothers as if they had fallen into fire.