[5]Authentic.
[5]Authentic.
At this time the illuminated boat of Rameses sailed from the shore opposite amid songs and outcries. Those very persons who half an hour earlier wished to burst into his villa were falling now on their faces before him, or hurling themselves into the water to kiss the oars and the sides of the boat which was bearing the son of their ruler.
Gladsome, surrounded by torches, Rameses, in company with Tutmosis, approached Sarah’s dwelling. At sight of him Gideon said to Tafet,—
“Great is my alarm for my daughter, but still greater my wish to avoid Prince Rameses.”
He sprang over the wall, and amid darkness through gardens and fields he held on in the direction of Memphis.
“Be greeted. O beauteous Sarah!” cried Tutmosis in the courtyard. “I hope that thou wilt receive us well for the music which I sent to thee.”
Sarah appeared, with bandaged head on the threshold, leaning on the black slave and her female attendant.
“What is the meaning of this?” cried the astonished Rameses.
“Terrible things!” called out Tafet. “Unbelievers attacked thy house; one hurled a stone and struck Sarah.”
“What unbelievers?”
“But those—the Egyptians!” explained Tafet.
The prince cast a contemptuous glance at her, but rage mastered him straightway.
“Who struck Sarah? Who threw the stone?” shouted he, seizing the arm of the black man.
“Those from beyond the river,” answered the slave.
“Hei, watchman!” cried the prince, foaming at the mouth, “arm all the men in this place for me and follow that rabble!”
The black slave seized his axe again, the overseers fell to summoning workmen from the buildings, some soldiers of the prince’s suite grasped their sword-hilts mechanically.
“By the mercy of Jehovah, what art thou doing?” whispered Sarah, as she hung on the neck of Rameses.
“I wish to avenge thee,” answered he; “whoso strikes at that which is mine strikes at me.”
Tutmosis grew pale, and shook his head.
“Hear me, lord,” said he; “wilt thou discover in the night and in a multitude the men who committed the crime?”
“All one to me. The rabble did it, and the rabble must give answer.”
“No judge will say that,” reflected Tutmosis. “But thou art to be the highest judge.”
The prince became thoughtful. Tutmosis continued,—
“Stop! what would the pharaoh our lord say to-morrow? And what delight would reign among our foes in the east and the west, if they heard that the heir to the throne, almost at the royal palace, was attacked in the night by his own people?”
“Oh, if my father would give me even half the army, our enemies on all sides of the world would be silent forever!” said the prince, stamping on the pavement.
“Finally, remember that man who hanged himself; thou wert sorry when an innocent man lost his life. But to-day is it possible that thou art willing thyself to slay innocent people?”
“Enough!” interrupted Rameses, in a deep voice. “My anger is like a water-jar. Woe to him on whom it falls! Let us enter.”
The frightened Tutmosis drew back. The prince took Sarah by the hand and went to the terrace. He seated her near the table on which was the unfinished supper, and approaching the light drew the bandage from her forehead.
“Ah!” cried he, “this is not even a wound, it is only a blue spot.”
He looked at Sarah attentively.
“I never thought,” said he, “that thou wouldst have a blue spot. This changed thy face considerably.”
“Then I please thee no longer?” whispered Sarah, raising on him great eyes full of fear.
“Oh, no! this will pass quickly.”
Then he called Tutmosis and the black, and commanded to tell him what had happened that evening.
“He defended us,” said Sarah. “He stood, with an axe, in the doorway.”
“Didst thou do that?” asked the prince, looking quickly into the eyes of the Nubian.
“Was I to let strange people break into thy house, lord?”
Rameses patted him on the curly head.
“Thou hast acted,” said he, “like a brave man. I give thee freedom. To-morrow thou wilt receive a reward and mayst return to thy own people.”
The black tottered and rubbed his eyes, the whites of which were shining. Suddenly he dropped on his knees, and cried as he struck the floor with his forehead,—
“Do not put me away, lord.”
“Well,” replied Rameses, “remain with me, but as a free warrior. I need just such men,” said he, turning to Tutmosis. “He cannot talk like the overseer of the house of books, but he is ready for battle.”
And again he inquired for details of the attack, when the Nubian told how a priest had approached, and when he related his miracles the prince seized his own head, exclaiming,—
“I am the most hapless man in all Egypt! Very soon I shall find a priest in my bed even. Whence did he come? Who was he?”
The black servitor could not explain this, but he said that the priest’s action toward the prince and toward Sarah was very friendly; that the attack was directed not by Egyptians, but by people who, the priest said, were enemies of Egypt, and whom he challenged to step forward, but they would not.
“Wonders! wonders!” said Rameses, meditating, and throwing himself on a couch. “My black slave is a valiant warrior and a man full of judgment. A priest defends a Jewess, because she is mine. What a strange priest he is! The Egyptian people who kneel down before the pharaoh’s dogs attack the house of the erpatr under direction of unknown enemies of Egypt. I myself must look into this.”
THE month Thoth has ended and the month Paofi (the second half of July) has begun. The water of the Nile, from being greenish and then white, has become ruddy and is rising continually. The royal indicator in Memphis is filled to the height of two men almost, and the Nile rises two hands daily. The lowest land is inundated; from higher ground people are removing hastily flax, grapes, and cotton of a certain species. Over places which were dry in the early morning, waves plash as evening approaches. A mighty, unseen whirlwind seems to blow in the depth of the Nile. This wind ploughs up broad spaces on the river, tills the furrows with foam, then smooths for a moment the surface, and after a time twists it into deep eddies. Again the hidden wind ploughs, again it smooths out, whirls, pushes forward new hills of water, new rows of foam, and raises the rustling river, wins without ceasing new platforms of land. Sometimes the water, after reaching a certain boundary, leaps across in a twinkle, pours into a low place, and makes a shining pond where a moment earlier withered grass was breaking up into dust heaps.
Though the rise of the river has reached barely one third of its height, the whole region near the banks is under water. Every hour some little height takes on the semblance of an island, divided from others by a narrow channel, which widens gradually and cuts off the house more and more from its neighbors. Very often he who walked out to work comes home in a boat from his labor.
Boats and rafts appear more and more frequently on the river. From some of them men are catching fish in nets; on others they bring the harvest to granaries, or bellowing cattle to their stables. With other boats visits are made to acquaintances to inform them amid shouts and laughter that the river is rising. Sometimes boats gather in one place, like a flock of daws, and then shoot apart on all sides before a broad raft bearing downfrom Upper Egypt immense blocks of stone hewn out in quarries near the river.
In the air, as far as the ear can hear, extend the roar of the rising water, the cries of frightened birds, and the gladsome songs of people. The Nile is rising, there will be bread in abundance.
During a whole month investigation continued in the affair of the attack on the house of Rameses. Each morning a boat with officials and warriors came to some small estate. People were snatched from their labor, overwhelmed with treacherous questions, beaten with sticks. Toward evening two boats returned to Memphis: one brought officials, the other brought prisoners.
In this way some hundreds of men were caught, of whom one half knew nothing, the other half were threatened by imprisonment or toil for a number of years in the quarries. But nothing was learned of those who led the attack, or of that priest who had persuaded the people to leave the place. Prince Rameses had qualities which were uncommonly contradictory. He was as impetuous as a lion and as stubborn as a bullock, but he had a keen understanding and a deep sense of justice.
Seeing that this investigation by officials gave no result whatever, he sailed on a certain day to Memphis and commanded to open the prison.
The prison was built on an eminence surrounded by a lofty wall, and was composed of a great number of stone, brick, and wooden buildings. These buildings for the main part were merely the dwellings of overseers. Prisoners were placed in subterranean dens hewn out in a cliff of limestone.
When Prince Rameses passed the gate, he saw a crowd of women washing and feeding some prisoner. This naked man, who resembled a skeleton, was sitting on the ground, having his hands and feet in four openings of a square plank which took the place of fetters.
“Has this man suffered long in this way?” asked Rameses.
“Two months,” said the overseer.
“And must he sit here much longer?”
“A month.”
“What did he do?”
“He was insolent to a tax gatherer.”
The prince turned and saw another crowd, composed of women and children. Among them was an old man.
“Are these prisoners?”
“No, most worthy lord. That is a family waiting for the body of a criminal who is to be strangled—oh, they are taking him already to the chamber,” said the overseer.
Then, turning to the crowd, he said,—
“Be patient a short time, dear people. Ye will get the body soon.”
“We thank thee greatly, worthy lord,” answered an old man, doubtless the father of the delinquent. “We left home yesterday evening, our flax is in the field, and the river is rising.”
The prince grew pale, and halted.
“Dost thou know,” asked he of the overseer, “that I have the right of pardon?”
“Erpatr, thou hast that right,” answered the overseer, bowing; and then he added: “The law declares, O child of the sun, that in memory of thy presence men condemned for offences against the state and religion, but who conduct themselves properly, should receive some abatement. A list of such persons will be placed at thy feet within a month.”
“But he who is to be strangled this moment, has he not the right to my grace?”
The overseer opened his arms, and bent forward in silence.
They moved from place to place, and passed a number of courts. In wooden cases on the bare ground were crowded men sentenced to imprisonment. In one building were heard awful screams; they were clubbing prisoners to force confession.
“I wish to see those accused of attacking my house,” said the heir, deeply moved.
“Of those there are more than three hundred,” said the overseer.
“Select according to thy own judgment the most guilty, and question them in my presence. I do not wish, though, to be known to them.”
They opened to Rameses a chamber in which the investigating official was occupied. The prince commanded him to take his usual place, but sat himself behind a pillar.
The accused appeared one by one. All were lean; much hair had grown out on them, and their eyes had the expression of settled bewilderment.
“Dutmoses,” said the official, “tell how ye attacked the house of the most worthy erpatr.”
“I will tell truth, as at the judgment seat of Osiris. It was the evening of that day when the Nile was to begin rising. My wife said to me, ‘Come, father, let us go up on the hills, where we can have an earlier sight of the signal in Memphis.’ Then we went up where we could see the signal in Memphis more easily. Some warrior came to my wife and said, ‘Come with me into that garden. We will find grapes there, and something else also.’ Then my wife went into the garden with that warrior. I fell into great rage, and I looked at them through the wall. But whether stones were thrown at the prince’s house or not I cannot tell, for because of the trees and darkness I could not see anything.”
“But how couldst thou let thy wife go with a warrior?” asked the official.
“With permission, worthiness, what was I to do? I am only an earth-worker, and he is a warrior and soldier of his holiness.”
“But didst thou see the priest who spoke to you?”
“That was not a priest,” said the man, with conviction. “That must have been the god Num himself, for he came out of a fig-tree and he had a ram’s head on him.”
“But didst thou see that he had a ram’s head?”
“With permission I do not remember well whether I saw myself or whether people told me. My eyes were affected by anxiety for my wife.”
“Didst thou throw stones at the garden?”
“Why should I throw stones, lord of life and death? If I had hit my wife, I should have made trouble for a week. If I had hit the warrior, I should have got a blow of a fist in the belly that would have made my tongue stick out, for I am nothing but an earth-worker, and he is a warrior of our lord who lives through eternity.”
The heir leaned out from behind the column. They led away Dutmoses, and brought in Anup. He was a short fellow. On his shoulders were scars from club-strokes.
“Tell me, Anup,” began the official again, “how was it about that attack on the garden of the heir to the throne?”
“Eye of the sun,” said the man, “vessel of wisdom, thou knowest best of all that I did not make the attack, only a neighbor comes to me and says he, ‘Anup, come up, for the Nile is rising.’ And I say to him, ‘Is it rising?’ And he says to me, ‘Thou art duller than an ass, for an ass would hear music on a hill, and thou dost not hear it.’ ‘But,’ says I, ‘I am dull, for I did not learn writing; but with permission music is one thing and the rise of the river is another.’ ‘If there were not a rise,’ says he, ‘people would not have anything to be glad about and play and sing.’ So I say to thy justice, we went to the hill, and they had driven away the music there and were throwing stones at the garden.”
“Who threw stones?”
“I could not tell. The men did not look like earth-workers, but more like unclean dissectors who open dead bodies for embalming.”
“And didst thou see the priest?”
“With thy permission, O watchfulness, that was not a priest, but some spirit that guards the house of the erpatr—may he live through eternity!”
“Why a spirit?”
“For at moments I saw him and at moments he went somewhere.”
“Perhaps he was behind the people?”
“Indeed the people sometimes were in front of him. But at one time he was higher and at another time lower—”
“Maybe he went up on the hill and came down from it?”
“He must have gone up and come down, but maybe he stretched and shortened himself, for he was a great wonder-worker. Barely had he said, ‘The Nile will rise,’ and that minute the Nile began to rise.”
“And didst thou throw stones, Anup?”
“How should I dare to throw stones into the garden of the erpatr? I am a simple fellow, my hand would wither to the elbow for such sacrilege.”
The prince gave command to stop the examination, and when they had led away the accused, he asked the official,—
“Are these of the most guilty?”
“Thou hast said it, lord,” answered the official.
“In that case all must be liberated to-day. We should not imprison people because they wished to convince themselves that the holy Nile was rising or for listening to music.”
“The highest wisdom is speaking through thy lips, erpatr,” said the official. “I was commanded to find the most guilty, hence I have summoned those whom I have found so; but it is not in my power to return them liberty.”
“Why?”
“Look, most worthy, on that box. It is full of papyruses on which are written the details of the case. A judge in Memphis receives a report on the progress of the case daily, and reports to his holiness. What would become of the labor of so many learned scribes and great men if the accused were set free?”
“But they are innocent!” cried the prince.
“There was an attack, therefore an offence. Where there is an offence there must be offenders. Whoever has fallen once into the hands of power, and is described in acts, cannot get free without some result. In an inn a man drinks and pays; at a fair he sells something and receives; in a field he sows and harvests; at graves he receives blessings from his deceased ancestors. How, then, could any one after he has come to a court return with nothing, like a traveller stopping half-way on his journey and turning back his steps homeward without attaining his object?”
“Thou speakest wisely,” answered the heir. “But tell me, has not his holiness the right to free these people?”
The official crossed his arms on his breast and bent his head,—
“He is equal to the gods, he can do what he wishes; liberate accused, nay, condemned men, and destroy even the documents of a case,—things which if done by a common man would be sacrilege.”
The prince took farewell of the official, and said to the overseer, “Give the accused better food at my expense.” Then hesailed, greatly irritated, to the other bank, stretching forth his hands toward the palace continually, as if begging the pharaoh to destroy the case.
But that day his holiness had many religious ceremonies and a counsel with the ministers, hence the heir could not see him. The prince went immediately to the grand secretary, who next to the minister of war had most significance at the court of the pharaoh. That ancient official, a priest at one of the temples in Memphis, received the prince politely but coldly, and when he had heard him he answered,—
“It is a marvel to me that thou wishest, worthiness, to disturb our lord with such questions. It is as if thou wert to beg him not to destroy locusts which devour what is on the fields.”
“But they are innocent people.”
“We, worthy lord, cannot know that, for law and the courts decide as to guilt and innocence. One thing is clear to me, the state cannot suffer an attack on any one’s garden, and especially cannot suffer that hands should be raised against property of the erpatr.”
“Thou speakest justly, but where are the guilty?” answered Rameses.
“Where there are no guilty there must at least be men who are punished. Not the guilt of a man, but the punishment which follows a crime, teaches others that they are not to commit the crime in question.”
“I see,” interrupted the heir, “that your worthiness will not support my prayer.”
“Wisdom flows from thy lips, erpatr,” answered the priest. “Never shall I give my lord a counsel which would expose the dignity of power to a blow.”
The prince returned home pained and astonished. He felt that an injury had been done to some hundreds of people, and he saw that he could not save them any more than he could rescue a man on whom an obelisk or the column of a temple had fallen.
“My hands are too weak to rear this edifice,” thought the prince, with anguish of spirit.
For the first time he felt that there was a power infinitely greater than his will,—the interest of the state, which even theall-powerful pharaoh acknowledges and before which he the erpatr must bend himself.
Night had fallen. Rameses commanded his servants to admit no one, and walked in loneliness on the terrace of his villa, thinking,—
“A wonderful thing! Down there at Pi-Bailos the invincible regiments of Nitager opened before me, while in Memphis an overseer of prisons, an investigating official, and a scribe bar the way to me. What are they? Mere servants of my father,—may he live through eternity!—who can cast them down to the rank of slaves at any moment and send them to the quarries. But why should not my father pardon the innocent? The state does not wish him to do so. And what is the state? Does it eat? where does it sleep? where are its hands and its sword, of which all are in terror?”
He looked into the garden, and among the trees on the summit of an eminence he saw two immense silhouettes of pylons, on which sentry lights were burning. The thought came to him that that watch never slept, those pylons never ate, but still they existed. Those pylons had existed for ages, mighty, like Rameses the Great, that potentate who had reared them.
Could he lift those edifices and hundreds of similar grandeur; could he escape those guards and thousands of others who watch over the safety of Egypt; could he disobey laws established by Rameses the Great and other preceding pharaohs still greater, laws which twenty dynasties had consecrated by their reverence?
In the soul of the prince for the first time in life a certain idea, dim but gigantic, began to fix itself in outline,—the idea of the state. The state is something more magnificent than the temple in Thebes, something grander than the pyramid of Cheops, something more ancient than the subterranean temple of the Sphinx, something more enduring than granite—in that immense though invisible edifice people are like ants in some cranny of a cliff, and the pharaoh a mere travelling architect who is barely able to lay one stone in the wall of the edifice and then go on farther. But the walls increase from generation to generation and the edifice continues.
He, the son of the pharaoh, had never felt yet his littlenessas in that moment, when his glance in the midst of the night was wandering beyond the Nile among pylons of the pharaoh’s palace, and the indefinite but imposing outlines of the Memphis temples.
At that moment from among the trees whose branches touched the terrace, he heard a voice.
“I know thy anxiety and I bless thee. The court will not free the prisoners. But the case will drop, and they may return to their houses if the overseer of thy land does not support the complaint of attack.”
“Then did my overseer make the charge?” asked the astonished prince.
“Thou hast spoken truth. He made the charge in thy name. But if he does not go to the court, there will be no injured person; and there is no offence if there is no injured person.”
The thicket rustled.
“Stop!” cried Rameses; “who art thou?”
No one gave answer. But it seemed to the prince that in a streak of light from a torch burning on the lower floor a naked head was visible for an instant, and also a panther skin.
“A priest,” whispered the heir. “Why does he hide himself?”
But at that moment it occurred to him that the priest might answer grievously for giving counsel which stopped the dispensation of justice.
RAMESES passed most of the night in feverish imaginings. Once the vision of the state appeared to him as an immense labyrinth with strong walls through which no one could force a way, then again he saw the shadow of a priest who with one wise opinion had indicated to him the method of escape from that labyrinth. And now appeared unexpectedly before him two powers,—the interest of the state, which he had not felt thus far, though he was heir to the throne; and the priesthood, which he wished to debase and then make his servant.
That was a burdensome night. The prince turned on his bed repeatedly, and asked himself whether he had not been blind, and if he had not received sight that day for the first time in order to convince himself of his folly and nothingness. How differently during those night hours did the warnings of his mother appear to him, and the restraint of his father in enouncing the supreme will, and even the stern conduct of the minister, Herhor.
“The state and the priesthood!” repeated the prince, half asleep, and covered with cold perspiration.
The heavenly deities alone know what would have happened had there been time to develop and ripen those thoughts which were circling that night in the soul of Rameses. Perhaps if he had become pharaoh he would have been one of the most fortunate and longest-lived rulers. Perhaps his name, carved in temples above ground and underground, would have come down to posterity surrounded with the highest glory. Perhaps he and his dynasty would not have lost the throne, and Egypt would have avoided great disturbance and the bitterest days of her history.
But the serenity of morning scattered the visions which circled above the heated head of the heir, and the succeeding days changed greatly his ideas of the inflexible interests of Egypt.
The visit of the prince to the prison was not fruitless. The investigating official made a report to the supreme judge immediately, the judge looked over the case again, examined some of the accused himself, and in the course of some days liberated the greater number; the remainder he brought to trial as quickly as possible.
When he who had complained of the damage done the prince’s property did not appear, though summoned in the hall of the court and on the market-place, the case was dropped, and the rest of the accused were set at liberty.
One of the judges remarked, it is true, that according to law the prince’s overseer should be prosecuted for false complaint, and, in case of conviction, suffer the punishment which threatened the defendants. This question too they passed over in silence.
The overseer disappeared from the eyes of justice, he wassent by the heir to the province of Takens, and soon the whole box of documents in the case vanished it was unknown whither.
On hearing this, Prince Rameses went to the grand secretary and asked with a smile,—
“Well, worthy lord, the innocent are liberated, the documents concerning them have been destroyed sacrilegiously, and still the dignity of the government has not been exposed to danger.”
“My prince,” answered the grand secretary, with his usual coolness, “I did not understand that thou offerest complaints with one hand and wishest to withdraw them with the other. Worthiness, thou wert offended by the rabble; hence it was thy affair to punish it. If thou hast forgiven it, the state has nothing to answer.”
“The state!—the state!” repeated the prince. “We are the state,” added he, blinking.
“Yes, the state is the pharaoh and—his most faithful servants,” added the secretary.
This conversation with such a high official sufficed to obliterate in the prince’s soul those ideas of state dignity which were growing and powerful, though indistinct yet. “The state, then, is not that immovable, ancient edifice to which each pharaoh is bound to add one stone of glory, but rather a sand-heap, which each ruler reshapes as he pleases. In the state there are no narrow doors, known as laws, in passing through which each must bow his head, whoever he be, erpatr or earth-worker. In this edifice are various entrances and exits, narrow for the weak and small, very wide, nay, commodious for the powerful.”
“If this be so,” thought the prince, as the idea flashed on him, “I will make the order which shall please me.”
At that moment Rameses remembered two people,—the liberated black who without waiting for command had been ready to die for him, and that unknown priest.
“If I had more like them, my will would have meaning in Egypt and beyond it,” said he to himself, and he felt an inextinguishable desire to find that priest.
“He is, in all likelihood, the man who restrained the crowd from attacking my house. On the one hand he knows law to perfection, on the other he knows how to manage multitudes.”
“A man beyond price! I must have him.”
From that time Rameses, in a small boat managed by one oarsman, began to visit the cottages in the neighborhood of his villa. Dressed in a tunic and a great wig, in his hand a staff on which a measure was cut out, the prince looked like an engineer studying the Nile and its overflows.
Earth-tillers gave him willingly all explanations concerning changes in the form of land because of inundations, and at the same time they begged that the government might think out some easier way of raising water than by sweeps and buckets. They told too of the attack on the house of Prince Rameses, and said that they knew not who threw the stones. Finally they mentioned the priest who had sent the crowd away so successfully; but who he was they knew not.
“There is,” said one man, “a priest in our neighborhood who cures sore eyes; there is one who heals wounds and sets broken arms and legs. There are some priests who teach reading and writing; there is one who plays on a double flute, and plays even beautifully. But that one who was in the garden of the heir is not among them, and they know nothing of him. Surely he must be the god Num, or some spirit watching over the prince,—may he live through eternity and always have appetite!”
“Maybe it is really some spirit,” thought Rameses.
In Egypt good or evil spirits always came more easily than rain.
The water of the Nile from being ruddy became brownish, and in August, the month of Hator, it reached one half its height. The sluices were opened on the banks of the river, and the water began to fill the canals quickly, and also the gigantic artificial lake, Moeris, in the province Fayum, celebrated for the beauty of its roses. Lower Egypt looked like an arm of the sea thickly dotted with hills on which were houses and gardens. Communication by land ceased altogether, and such a multitude of boats circled around on the water—boats white, yellow, red, dark—that they seemed like leaves in autumn. On the highest points of land people had finished harvesting the peculiar cotton of the country, and for the second time had cut clover and begun to gather in olives and tamarinds.
On a certain day, while sailing along over inundated lands, the prince saw an unusual movement. On one of the temporary mounds was heard among the trees the loud cry of a woman.
“Surely some one is dead,” thought Rameses.
From a second mound were sailing away in small boats supplies of wheat and some cattle, while people standing at buildings on the land threatened and abused people in the boats.
“Some quarrel among neighbors,” said the prince to himself.
In remoter places there was quiet, and people instead of working or singing were sitting on the ground in silence.
“They must have finished work and are resting.”
But from a third mound a boat moved away with a number of crying children, while a woman wading in the water to her waist shook her fist and threatened.
“They are taking children to school,” thought Rameses.
These happenings began to interest him.
On a fourth mound he heard a fresh cry. He shaded his eyes and saw a man lying on the ground; a negro was beating him.
“What is happening there?” asked Rameses of the boatman.
“Does not my lord see that they are beating a wretched earth-tiller?” answered the boatman, smiling. “He must have done something, so pain is travelling through his bones.”
“But who art thou?”
“I?” replied the boatman, proudly. “I am a free fisherman. If I give a certain share of my catch to his holiness, I may sail the Nile from the sea to the cataract. A fisherman is like a fish or a wild goose; but an earth-tiller is like a tree which nourishes lords with its fruit and can never escape but only squeaks when overseers spoil the bark on it.”
“Oho! ho! but look there!” cried the fisherman, pleased again. “Hei! father, don’t drink up all the water, or there will be a bad harvest.”
This humorous exclamation referred to a group of persons who were displaying a very original activity. A number of naked laborers were holding a man by the legs and plunging him head first in the water to his neck, to his breast, and at last to his waist. Near them stood an overseer with a cane; he wore a stained tunic and a wig made of sheepskin.
A little farther on some men held a woman by the arms, while she screamed in a voice which was heaven-piercing.
Beating with a stick was as general in the happy kingdom of the pharaoh as eating and sleeping. They beat children and grown people, earth-tillers, artisans, warriors, officers, and officials. All living persons were caned save only priests and the highest officials—there was no one to cane them. Hence the prince looked calmly enough on an earth-worker beaten with a cane; but to plunge a man into water roused his attention.
“Ho! ho!” laughed the boatman, meanwhile, “but are they giving him drink! He will grow so thick that his wife must lengthen his belt for him.”
The prince commanded to row to the mound. Meanwhile they had taken the man from the river, let him cough out water, and seized him a second time by the legs, in spite of the unearthly screams of his wife, who fell to biting the men who had seized her.
“Stop!” cried Rameses to those who were dragging the earth-tiller.
“Do your duty!” cried he of the sheepskin wig, in nasal tones. “Who art thou, insolent, who darest—”
At that moment the prince gave him a blow on the forehead with his cane, which luckily was light. Still the owner of the stained tunic dropped to the earth, and feeling his wig and head, looked with misty eyes at the attacker.
“I divine,” said he in a natural voice, “that I have the honor to converse with a notable person. May good humor always accompany thee, lord, and bile never spread through thy bones—”
“What art thou doing to this man?” interrupted Rameses.
“Thou inquirest,” returned the man, speaking again in nasal tones, “like a foreigner unacquainted with the customs of the country and the people, to whom he speaks too freely. Know, then, that I am the collector of his worthiness Dagon, the first banker in Memphis. And if thou hast not grown pale yet, know that the worthy Dagon is the agent and the friend of the erpatr,—may he live through eternity!—and that thou hast committed violence on the lands of Prince Rameses; to this my people will testify.”
“Then know this,” interrupted the prince; but he stopped suddenly. “By what right art thou torturing in this way one of the prince’s earth-tillers?”
“Because he will not pay his rent, and the treasury of the heir is in need of it.”
The servants of the official, in view of the catastrophe which had come on their master, dropped their victim and stood as helpless as the members of a body from which its head has been severed. The liberated man began to spit again and shake the water out of his ears, but his wife rushed up to the rescuer.
“Whoever thou art,” groaned she, clasping her hands before Rameses, “a god, or even a messenger of the pharaoh, listen to the tale of our sufferings. We are earth-tillers of the heir to the throne,—may he live through eternity!—and we have paid all our dues: in millet, in wheat, in flowers, and in skins of cattle. But in the last ten days this man here has come and commands us again to give seven measures of wheat to him. ‘By what right?’ asks my husband; ‘the rents are paid, all of them.’ But he throws my husband on the ground, stamps, and says, ‘By this right, that the worthy Dagon has commanded.’ ‘Whence shall I get wheat,’ asks my husband, ‘when we have none and for a month past we have eaten only seeds, or roots of lotus, which are harder and harder to get, for great lords like to amuse themselves with flowers of the lotus?’”
She lost breath and fell to weeping. The prince waited patiently till she calmed herself, but the man who had been plunged into the water grumbled.
“This woman will bring misfortune with her talk. I have said that I do not like to see women meddle.”
Meanwhile the official, pushing up to the boatman, asked in an undertone, indicating Rameses,—
“Who is this?”
“Ah, may thy tongue wither!” answered the boatman. “Dost thou not see that he must be a great lord: he pays well and strikes heavily.”
“I saw at once,” answered the official, “that he must be some great person. My youth passed at feasts with noted persons.”
“Aha! the sauces have stuck to thy dress after those feasts,” blurted out the boatman.
The woman, after crying, continued,—
“To-day this scribe came with his people, and said to my husband, ‘If thou hast not money, give thy two sons. The worthy Dagon will not only forgive thee the rent, but will pay thee a drachma a year for each boy.’”
“Woe to me because of thee!” roared the half-drowned husband; “thou wilt destroy us all with thy babbling. Do not listen to her,” continued he, turning to Rameses. “As a cow thinks that she frightens off flies with her tail, so it seems to a woman that she can drive away collectors with her tongue; and neither cow nor woman knows that she is stupid.”
“Thou art stupid!” said the woman. “Sunlike lord with the form of a pharaoh—”
“I call to witness that this woman blasphemes,” said the official to his people in a low voice.
“Odorous flower, whose voice is like a flute, listen to me!” implored the woman of Rameses. “Then my husband answered this official, ‘I would rather lose two bulls, if I had them, than give my boys away, though thou wert to give me four drachmas; for when a boy leaves home for service no one ever sees him after that.’”
“Would that I were choked! would that fish were eating my body in the bottom of the Nile!” groaned the earth-tiller. “Thou wilt destroy all our house with thy complaints, woman.”
The official, seeing that he had the support of the side mainly interested, stepped forth and began, in nasal tones, a second time,—
“Since the sun rises beyond the palace of the pharaoh and sets over the pyramids, various wonders have happened in this country. In the days of the Pharaoh Sememphes marvellous things appeared near the pyramid of Kochom, and a plague fell on Egypt. In the time of Boetus the ground opened near Bubastis and swallowed many people. In the reign of Neferches the waters of the Nile for eleven days were as sweet as honey. Men saw these and many other things of which I know, for I am full of wisdom. But never has it been seen that someunknown man came up out of the water and stopped the collection of rent in the lands of the heir to the throne of Egypt.”
“Be silent,” shouted Rameses, “and be off out of this place! No one will take thy children,” said he to the woman.
“It is easy for me to go away,” said the collector, “for I have a swift boat and five rowers. But, worthiness, give me some sign for my lord Dagon.”
“Take off thy wig and show him the sign on thy forehead,” said Rameses. “And tell Dagon that I will put marks of the same kind all over his body.”
“Listen to that blasphemy!” whispered the collector to his men, drawing back toward the bank with low bows.
He sat down in the boat, and when his assistants had moved off and pushed away some tens of yards, he stretched out his hand and shouted,—
“May gripe seize thy intestines, blasphemer, rebel! From here I will go straight to Prince Rameses and tell him what is happening on his lands.”
Then he took his cane and belabored his men because they had not taken part with him.
“So it will be with thee!” cried he to Rameses.
The prince sprang into his boat and in a rage commanded the boatman to pursue the insolent servant of the usurer. But he of the sheepskin wig threw down the cane, took an oar himself, and his men helped him so well that pursuit became impossible.
“Sooner could an owl overtake a lark than we overtake them, my beautiful lord,” cried the prince’s boatman, laughing. “But who art thou? Thou art not a surveyor, but an officer, maybe even an officer of the guard of his holiness. Thou dost strike right always on the forehead! I know about this; I was five years in the army. I always struck on the forehead or the belly, and I had not the worst time in the world. But if any one struck me, I understood right away that he must be a great person. In our Egypt—may the gods never leave the land!—it is terribly crowded; town is near town, house is near house, man is near man. Whoso wishes to turn in this throng must strike in the forehead.”
“Art thou married?” asked the prince.
“Pfu! when I have a woman and place for a person and a half, I am married; but for the rest of the time I am single. I have been in the army, and I know that a woman is good, though not at all times. She is in the way often.”
“Perhaps thou wouldst come to me for service? Who knows, wouldst thou be sorry to work for me?”
“With permission, worthiness, I noticed that thou couldst lead a regiment in spite of thy young face. But I enter the service of no man. I am a free fisherman; my grandfather was, with permission, a shepherd in Lower Egypt, our family comes of the Hyksos people. It is true that dull Egyptian earth-tillers revile us, but I laugh at them. The earth-tillers and the Hyksos, I say, worthiness, are like an ox and a bull. The earth-tiller may go behind the plough or before it, but the Hyksos will not serve any man, unless in the army of his holiness,—that is warrior life.”
The boatman was in the vein and talked continually, but the prince heard no longer. In his soul very painful questions grew louder and louder, for they were new altogether. Were those mounds, then, around which he had been sailing, on his property? A marvellous thing, he knew not at all where his lands were nor what they looked like. So in his name Dagon had imposed new rents on the people, and the active movement on which he had been looking while moving along the shores was the extortion of rents. It was clear that the man whom they had been beating on the shore had nothing to pay with. The children who were crying bitterly in the boat were sold at a drachma per head for a twelvemonth, and that woman who was wading in the water to her waist and weeping was their mother.
“Women are very unquiet,” said the prince to himself. “Sarah is the quietest woman; but others love to talk much, to cry and raise an uproar.”
He remembered the man who was pacifying his wife’s excitement. They had been plunging him into the water and he was not angry; they did nothing to her, and still she made an uproar.
“Women are very unquiet!” repeated he. “Yes, even my mother, who is worthy of honor. What a difference between herand my father! His holiness does not wish to know at all that I left the army for a girl, but the queen likes to occupy herself even with this, that I took into my house a Jewess. Sarah is the quietest of women whom I know; but Tafet cries and makes an uproar for four persons.”
Then the prince recalled the words of the man’s wife,—that for a month they had not eaten wheat, only seeds and roots of lotus. Lotus and poppy seeds are similar; the roots are poor. He could not eat them for three days in succession. Moreover, the priests who were occupied in medicine advised change of diet. While in school they told him that a man ought to eat flesh with fish, dates with wheat bread, figs with barley. But for a whole month to live on lotus seeds! Well, cows and horses? Cows and horses like hay, but barley straw must be shoved into their throats by force. Surely then earth-workers prefer lotus seeds as food, while wheat or barley cakes, fish and flesh they do not relish. For that matter, the most pious priests, wonder-workers, never touch flesh or fish. Evidently magnates and king’s sons need flesh, just as lions and eagles do; but earth-tillers grass, like an ox.
“Only that plunging into the water to pay rent. Ei! but didn’t he once in bathing with his comrades put them under water, and even dive himself? What laughing they had in those days! Diving was fun. And as to beating with a cane, how many times had they beaten him in school? It is painful, but evidently not for every creature. A beaten dog howls and bites; a beaten ox does not even look around. So beating may pain a great lord, but a common man cries only so as to cry when the chance comes. Not all cry; soldiers and officers sing while belabored.”
But these wise reflections could not drown the small but annoying disquiet in the heart of Rameses. So his tenant Dagon had imposed an unjust rent which the tenants could not pay!
At this moment the prince was not concerned about the tenants, but his mother. His mother must know of this Phœnician management. What would she say about it to her son? How she would look at him! How sneeringly she would laugh! And she would not be a woman if she did not speak to him asfollows: “I told thee, Rameses, that Phœnicians would desolate thy property.”
“If those traitorous priests,” thought the prince, “would give me twenty talents to-day, I would drive out that Dagon in the morning, my tenants would not be plunged under water, would not suffer blows, and my mother would not jeer at me. A tenth, a hundredth part of that wealth which is lying in the temples and feeding the greedy eyes of those bare heads would make me independent for years of Phœnicians.”
Just then an idea which was strange enough flashed up in the soul of Rameses,—that between priests and earth-tillers there existed a certain opposition.
“Through Herhor,” thought he, “that man hanged himself on the edge of the desert. To maintain priests and temples about two million Egyptian men toil grievously. If the property of the priests belonged to the pharaoh’s treasury, I should not have to borrow fifteen talents and my people would not be oppressed so terribly. There is the source of misfortunes for Egypt and of weakness for its pharaohs!”
The prince felt that a wrong was done the people; therefore he experienced no small solace in discovering that priests were the authors of this evil. It did not occur to him that his judgment might be unjust and faulty. Besides, he did not judge, he was only indignant. The anger of a man never turns against himself,—just as a hungry panther never eats its own body; it twirls its tail and moves its ears while looking for a victim.
THE expedition of the heir to the throne, undertaken with the object of discovering the priest who had saved Sarah and had given him legal advice, had a result that was unexpected.
The priest was not discovered, but among Egyptian earth-tillers legends began to circulate which concerned Rameses.
Some mysterious man sailed about from village to village and told the people that the heir to the throne freed the men who were in danger of condemnation to the quarries for attackinghis dwelling. Besides, he had beaten down an official who was extorting unjust rent from tenants. Finally, the unknown person added that Prince Rameses was under the special guardianship of Amon, who was his father.
Simple people listened to these tidings eagerly, first, because they agreed with facts, second, because the man who told the story was himself like a spirit—it was not known whence he came nor whither he had vanished.
Prince Rameses made no mention whatever of his tenants to Dagon; he did not even summon him. He felt ashamed in presence of the Phœnician from whom he had taken money and might require money yet more than one time.
But a few days after the adventure with Dagon’s scribe the banker came himself to the heir, holding in his hand some covered object.
On entering the prince’s chamber he bent down, untied a white kerchief, and drew forth from it a very beautiful gold goblet; the goblet was set with stones of various colors, and covered with carving in relief which on the lower part represented the gathering and pressing out of grapes and on the cup part a feast.
“Accept this goblet, worthy lord, from thy slave,” said the banker, “and use it for a hundred, a thousand years, to the end of ages.”
The prince understood what the Phœnician wanted; so, without touching the golden gift, he said with a stern expression,—
“Dost thou see, Dagon, that purple reflection inside the goblet?”
“I do, indeed,” replied the banker; “why should I not see that which shows the goblet to be the purest gold?”
“But I declare that to be the blood of children seized away from their parents,” said the heir, angrily.
And he turned and went to an interior chamber.
“O Astoreth!” groaned the Phœnician.
His lips grew blue, and his hands trembled so that he was hardly able to wrap up the goblet.
A couple of days later Dagon sailed down with his goblet to Sarah’s house. He was arrayed in robes interwoven with gold; in his thick beard were glass globulets from which issued perfumes, and he had fastened two plumes to his head.
“Beautiful Sarah,” began he, “may Jehovah pour on thy family as many blessings as there are waters in the Nile at present! We Phœnicians and ye Jews are brethren and neighbors. I am inflamed with such ardor of love for thee that didst thou not belong to our most worthy lord I would give Gideon ten talents for thee, and would take thee for my lawful wife. So enamored am I.”
“May God preserve me,” answered Sarah, “from wanting another lord beyond the one who is mine at this moment. But whence, worthy Dagon, did the desire come to thee to-day of visiting our lord’s servant?”
“I will tell thee the truth, as if thou wert Tamara, my wife, who, a real daughter of Sidon, though she brought me a large dowry, is old now and not worthy to take off thy sandals.”
“In the honey flowing from thy lips there is much wormwood,” put in Sarah.
“Let the honey,” replied Dagon, sitting down, “be for thee and let the wormwood poison my heart. Our lord Prince Rameses—may he live through eternity!—has the mouth of a lion and the keenness of a vulture. He has seen fit to rent his estate to me. This has filled my stomach with delight; but he does not trust me, so I lay awake whole nights from anxiety, I only sigh and cover my bed with tears, in which bed would that thou wert resting with me, O Sarah, instead of my wife Tamara, who cannot rouse desire in me any longer.”
“That is not what thou wishest to say,” interrupted the blushing Sarah.
“I know not what I wish to say, since I have looked on thee, and since our lord, examining my activity on his estates, struck with a cane and took health from my scribe who was collecting dues there from tenants. And these dues were not for me. Sarah, but for our lord. It is not I who will eat the figs and wheaten bread from those lands, but thou and our lord. I have given money to our lord and jewels to thee. Why then should the low Egyptian rabble impoverish our lord and thee, Sarah? To show how greatly thou rousest my desire and that from these estates I wish nothing but reserve all for thee and our lord, I give this goblet of pure gold set with jewels and covered with carving at which the gods themselves would be astonished.”
Then Dagon drew forth from the cloth the goblet refused by Prince Rameses.
“I do not even wish that thou shouldst have the goblet in the house and give the prince to drink from it. Give this goblet of pure gold to Gideon, whom I love as my own brother. And thou, Sarah, tell thy father these words: ‘Thy twin brother Dagon, the unfortunate tenant on the lands of Prince Rameses, is ruined. Drink then, my father, from this goblet, think of thy twin brother, and beg Jehovah that our lord, Prince Rameses, may not beat his scribes, and bring to revolt tenants who even now have no wish to pay tribute.’ And know this, Sarah, that if thou wouldst admit me to confidence I would give thee two talents, and thy father one talent, and, besides, I should be ashamed of giving thee so little, for thou deservest that the pharaoh himself should fondle thee, and the heir of the throne, and the worthy minister Herhor, and the most valiant Nitager, and the richest bankers of the Phœnicians. There is such a taste in thee that I grow faint when I gaze at thee, and when I see thee not, I close my eyes and lick my lips. Thou art sweeter than figs, more fragrant than roses. I would give thee five talents. Take this goblet, Sarah.”
Sarah drew back with drooping eyes.
“I will not take the goblet,” answered she; “my lord forbade me to take gifts from any one.”
Dagon was astonished, and looked with widely opened eyes at her.
“Then it must be that thou knowest not, Sarah, the value of this goblet. But I give it to thy father, who is my brother.”
“I cannot take it,” whispered Sarah.
“Oh!” cried Dagon. “Then thou, Sarah, wilt pay me for this goblet in another way, without speaking to thy lord. But a woman as beautiful as thou must have gold and jewels, and should have her own banker to bring her money when she pleases, not alone when her lord likes.”
“I cannot!” whispered Sarah, without concealing her repulsion for the banker.
The Phœnician changed his tone in the twinkle of an eye, and said laughing,—
“Very good, Sarah! I only wished to convince myself that thou art faithful to our lord. I see that thou art faithful, though foolish, as people say.”
“What?” burst out Sarah, rushing at Dagon with clinched fist.
“Ha! ha!” laughed the Phœnician. “What a pity that our lord could not hear and see thee this moment! But I will tell him, when he is in good humor, that thou art not only as faithful as a dog to him, but even that thou wouldst not accept a gold goblet because he has not permitted thee to take presents. And this goblet, believe me, Sarah, has tempted more than one woman, and women who were not of small importance.”
Dagon sat awhile admiring the virtue and obedience of Sarah; at last he took farewell of her with much feeling, sat down in his tented boat, and sailed away toward Memphis. When the boat had pushed off from the country house, the smile vanished from the banker’s face, and an expression of anger came out thereon. When Sarah’s house was hidden behind the trees, Dagon stood up and raised his hands.
“O Baal of Sidon, O Astoreth!” said he, “avenge my insult on this cursed daughter of a Jew. Let her treacherous beauty perish as a drop of rain in the desert! May disease devour her body, and madness bind her soul! May her lord hunt her out of his house like a mangy swine! And as to-day she pushed my goblet aside, may the hour come when people will push her withered hand aside, when in thirst she begs them for a cup of dirty water.”
Then he spat and muttered words with hidden and dreadful meaning; a black cloud covered the sun for a while, and the water near the side of the boat began to grow muddy and rise in a mighty wave. When he finished, the sun had grown bright again; but the river was disturbed, as if a new inundation were moving it.
Dagon’s rowers were frightened, and ceased their singing; but separated from their master by the side of the boat, they could not see his ceremonies.
Thenceforth the Phœnician did not appear before Prince Rameses. But on a certain day when the prince came to his residence, he found in his bedchamber a beautiful Phœniciandancer, sixteen years of age, whose entire dress was a golden circlet on her head, and a shawl, as delicate as spider webs, thrown across her shoulders.
“Who art thou?” asked the prince.
“I am a priestess, and thy servant; the lord Dagon has sent me to frighten away thy anger against him.”
“How wilt thou do that?”
“Oh, in this way—sit down there,” said she, seating him in an armchair. “I will stand on tiptoe, so as to grow taller than thy anger, and with this shawl, which is sacred, I will drive evil spirits from thee. A kish! a kish!” whispered she, dancing in a circle. “Rameses, let my hands remove gloom from thy hair, let my kisses bring back to thy eyes their bright glances. Let the beating of my heart fill thy ears with music, lord of Egypt.—A kish! a kish! he is not yours, but mine.—Love demands such silence that in its presence even anger must grow still.”
While dancing, she played with the prince’s hair, put her arms around his neck, kissed him on the eyes. At last she sat down wearied at his feet, and, resting her head on his knees, turned her face toward him quickly, panting with parted lips.
“Thou art no longer angry with thy servant Dagon?” whispered she, stroking his face.
Rameses wished to kiss her on the lips, but she sprang away from his knees, crying,—
“Oh, that is not possible!”
“Why so?”
“I am a virgin and priestess of the great goddess Astoreth. Thou wouldst have to love my guardian goddess greatly, and honor her before thou couldst kiss me.”
“But is it permitted thee?”
“All things are permitted me, for I am a priestess, and have sworn to preserve my virginity.”
“Why hast thou come hither, then?”
“To drive out thy anger. I have done so, I depart. Be well and kind always,” added she, with a piercing glance.
“Where dost thou dwell? What is thy name?” asked Rameses.
“My name is Fondling, and I dwell— Ei, why should I tell? Thou wilt not come soon to me.”
She waved her hand and vanished. The prince, as if stunned, did not move from his chair. When after a while he looked through the window, he saw a rich litter which four Nubians bore toward the Nile swiftly.
Rameses was not sorry for the departing woman; she astonished, but did not attract him.
“Sarah is calmer,” thought he, “and more beautiful. Moreover, it seems to me that that Phœnician must be cold, and her fondlings are studied.”
But from that time the prince ceased to be angry at Dagon, all the more since on a day when he was at Sarah’s earth-tillers came to him, and thanking him for protection declared that the Phœnician forced them to pay new rents no longer.
That was the case close to Memphis, but on other lands the prince’s tenants made good Dagon’s losses.