The wise Mambres contradicted not the opinion of the king and council. The right of exorcising belonged to him. He could delay it under some plausible pretence. The god Apis had lately died at Memphis. A god ox dies just like another ox. And it was not allowed to exorcise any person in Egypt until a new ox was found to replace the deceased. It was decreed in the council to wait until the nomination should be made of a new god at Memphis. The good old man, Mambres, perceived to what danger his dear princess was exposed. He knew who her lover was. The syllables NEBU----, which had escaped her, laid open the whole mystery to the eyes of this sage. The dynasty of Memphis belonged at that time to the Babylonians. They preserved this remainder of the conquests they had gained under the greatest king of the world, to whom Amasis was a mortal enemy. Mambres had occasion for all his wisdom to conduct himself properly in the midst of so many difficulties. If the king Amasis should discover the lover of his daughter, her death would be inevitable. He had sworn it. The great, the young, the beautiful king of whom she was enamored, had dethroned the king her father, and Amasis had only recovered his kingdom about seven years. From that time it was not known what had become of the adorable monarch--the conqueror and idol of the nations--the tender and generous lover of the charming Amasidia. Sacrificing the white bull would eventually occasion the death of the beautiful princess. [Illustration: Lot and his wayward daughters leaving Sodom.--From a celebrated picture in S. Marks, Florence, by Domenico Cresti, named il Passigiano.] DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH. A STRANGE METAMORPHOSIS. In the preceding engraving the artist has pictured the "Cities of the Plain" in flames, ignited by a shower of "fire and brimstone out of heaven." Warned by an angel, Lot and his family are fleeing from the conflagration. The madame has, however, unfortunately changed her mind, and is seen returning toward the doomed locality. She dearly loves her home, and braves danger--even death--in its protection. Her husband and her children heartlessly forsake her. Lot does not look like the coward he is represented to have been, who basely offered to surrender his daughters to the horrible abuse of a Sodomite mob; and the daughters--innocent and beautiful--seem incapable of the depravity with which they are charged in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis. The comical statement that Madame Lot was transformed into "a pillar of salt" for merely _looking back_ toward her old home in Sodom, rests on bible authority, and is believed by all the world excepting intelligent clergymen, scientists, philosophers and reasonable people.