The Pharaoh and the Priest. Bolesław Prus

which there will be changes in

       Egypt."

      "What changes? And who is the man who during the life of the pharaoh may dare to speak of the plans of his successor?"

      Now the prince grew gloomy.

      "That is one thing, but I will tell thee another," said, Tutmosis, "for misfortunes, like hyenas, never come singly. Dost Thou know that the lowest people sing songs about thee, sing how Thou didst free the attackers from prison, and what is worse, they repeat again, that, when Thou shalt succeed his holiness, rents will be abolished. It must be added that when common people speak of injustice and rents, disturbances follow; and either a foreign enemy attacks our weakened state, or Egypt is divided into as many parts as there are nomarchs. Finally, judge for thyself, is it proper that any man's name should be mentioned oftener than the pharaoh's, and that any man should stand between the people and our lord? If Thou permit, I will tell how priests look on this matter."

      "Of course, speak."

      "Well, a very wise priest who from the summit of the temple of Amon examines celestial movements, has thought out this statement: 'The pharaoh is the sun, the heir to the throne the moon. When the moon follows the god of light from afar, we have brightness in the daytime and clearness at night. When the moon wishes to be too near the sun, it disappears itself and the nights are dark. But if the moon stands before the sun there is an eclipse, and in the world great terror '."

      "And all this babble," interrupted Ramses, "goes to the ears of his holiness. Misfortune on my head! Would that I had never been the son of a pharaoh!"

      "The pharaoh, as a god upon earth, knows everything; but he is too mighty to care for the drunken shouts of soldiers or the whispers of earth tillers. He understands that every Egyptian would die for him, and Thou first of all."

      "Thou hast spoken truth!" answered the anxious prince. "But in all this I see new vileness and deceit of the priests," added he, rousing himself. "It is I, then, who hide the majesty of our lord, because I free the innocent from prison, or do not let my tenant torture earth- workers with unjust tribute. But when his worthiness Herhor manages the army, appoints leaders, negotiates with foreign princes, and directs my father to spend his time in prayers."

      Tutmosis covered his ears, and, stamping, cried, "Be silent! be silent! every word of thine is blasphemy. His holiness alone directs the state, and whatever is done on earth proceeds from his will. Herhor is a servant of the pharaoh and does what his lord enjoins on him. If Thou wilt convince thyself oh, that my words be not ill understood."

      The prince grew so gloomy that Tutmosis broke off the conversation and took farewell of his friend at the earliest. When he sat down in his boat, which was furnished with a baldachin and curtains, he drew a deep breath and draining a large goblet of wine, thought,

      "Brr! I thank the gods for not giving me such a character as that which Ramses has. He is a most unhappy man in the happiest conditions. He might have the most beautiful women in Memphis, but he sticks to one to annoy his mother. Meanwhile it is not his mother that he annoys, but all the virtuous virgins and faithful wives who are withering from sadness that the heir to the throne, and moreover a youth of great comeliness, does not snatch from them virtue or force them to unfaithfulness. He might not only drink but even swim in the best wine; meanwhile he prefers the wretched camp beer, and bread rubbed with garlic. Whence came these low inclinations? I cannot imagine. Or was it that the worthy Nikotris in her critical period looked at workmen while they were eating?

      "He might do nothing from daylight till darkness. If he wished, the most famous lords, with their wives, sisters, and daughters, would serve food to him. He not only stretches forth his own hands to take food, but, to the torment of our noble youths, he washes himself, dresses himself, and his barber spends whole days in snaring birds and thus wastes his abilities.

      "O Ramses, Ramses!" sighed the exquisite. "Is it possible that fashion should be developed in the time of such a prince? We wear the same aprons from one year to another, and we retain wigs, only thanks to court dignitaries, for Ramses will not wear any wig. This is a great offence to the whole order of nobles. And all brought about by cursed politics, brr! Oh, how happy I am that I need not divine what they are thinking of in Tyre or Nineveh; break my head over wages for the army; calculate how many people have been added to Egypt or taken from it, and what rents must be collected. It is a terrible thing to say to one's self, 'My tenant does not pay what I need and expend, but what the increase of the Nile permits.'."

      Thus meditated the exquisite Tutmosis, while he strengthened his anxious soul with golden wine. Before the boat had sailed up to Memphis, heavy sleep had mastered him in such wise that his slaves had to carry their lord to the litter.

      After the departure of Tutmosis, which resembled a flight, the heir fell to thinking deeply; he even felt fear.

      Ramses was a skeptic. As a pupil of the priests, and a member of the highest aristocracy, he knew that when certain priests had fasted many months and mortified their senses they summoned spirits, while others spoke of spirits as a fancy, a deception. He had seen, too, that Apis, the sacred bull before which all Egypt fell prostrate, received at times heavy blows of a cane from inferior priests, who gave the beast food and brought cows to him.

      He understood, finally, that his father, Ramses XII, who for the common crowd was a god who lived through eternity, and the all-commanding lord of this world, was really just such a person as others, only a little more weakly than ordinary old men, and very much limited in power by the priestly order.

      The prince saw all this, and jeered in his soul and even la public at many things. But all his infidelity fell before the actual truth, that no one was permitted to trifle with the titles of the pharaoh.

      Ramses knew the history of his country, and he remembered that in Egypt many things were forgiven the mighty. A great lord might ruin a canal, kill a man in secret, revile the gods privately, take presents from ambassadors of foreign states, but two sins were not forgiven, the betrayal of priestly secrets, and treason to the pharaoh. A man who committed one or the other disappeared, sometimes after a year, from among his friends and servants. But where he had been put or what had been done with him, no one even dared to mention.

      Ramses felt that he was on an incline of this sort from the time that the army and the people began to mention his name and speak of certain plans of his, changes in the state, future wars. Thinking of this, the prince felt as if a nameless crowd of rebels and unfortunates were pushing him violently to the point of the highest obelisk, from which he must tumble down and be crushed into jelly.

      Later on, when, after the longest life of his father possible, he became pharaoh, he would have the right and the means to accomplish many deeds of which no one in Egypt could even think without terror. But today he must in truth have a care, lest they declare him a traitor and a rebel against the fundamental laws of Egypt. In that state there was one visible ruler, the pharaoh. He governed, he desired, he thought for all, and woe to the man who dared to doubt audibly the all-might of the sovereign, or mention plans of his own, or even changes in general.

      Plans were made in one place alone, in that hall where the pharaoh listened to advice from his aiding council, and expressed to it his own opinions. No changes could come save from that place. There burned the only visible lamp of political wisdom, the light of which illuminated Egypt. But touching that light, it was safer to be silent.

      All these considerations flew through the prince's head with the swiftness of a whirlwind while he was sitting on the stone bench under the chestnut-tree in Sarah's garden, and looking at the landscape there around him.

      The water of the Nile had fallen a little, and had begun to grow as transparent as a crystal. But the whole country looked yet like an arm of the sea thickly dotted with islands on which rose buildings, gardens, and orchards, while here and there groups of great trees served as ornament.

      Around all these islands were well-sweeps, with buckets by which bronze-hued naked men with dirty breech clouts raised water from the Nile and poured it into higher reservoirs. One such place was in the prince's mind especially. That was a steep eminence on the side of which three men were working