though some people, who ought to know better, do fancy he can be
bribed and is no better than the son of an ass. What did I do then? I
pretended to be quite crushed into submission by the sight of the
signet-ring, begged Pichi as politely as I could to unfasten my hands,
and told him I would fetch the keys. They loosened the cords, I flew up
the stairs five steps at a time, burst open the door of your
sleeping-room, pushed my little grandson, who was standing by it, into
the room and barred it within. Thanks to my long legs, the others were so
far behind that I had time to get hold of the black box which you had
told me to take so much care of, put it into the child's arms, lift him
through the window on to the balcony which runs round the house towards
the inner court, and tell him to put it at once into the pigeon-house.
Then I opened the door as if nothing had happened, told Pichi the child
had had a knife in his mouth, and that that was the reason I had run
upstairs in such a hurry, and had put him out on the balcony to punish
him. That brother of a hippopotamus was easily taken in, and then he made
me show him over the house. First they found the great sycamore-chest
which you had told me to take great care of too, then the papyrus-rolls
on your writing-table, and so by degrees every written paper in the
house. They made no distinction, but put all together into the great
chest and carried it downstairs; the little black box, however, lay safe
enough in the pigeon-house. My grandchild is the sharpest boy in all
Sais!

"When I saw them really carrying the chest downstairs, all the anger I'd
been trying so hard to keep down burst out again. I told the impudent
fellows I would accuse them before the magistrates, nay, even before the
king if necessary, and if those confounded Persians, who were having the
city shown them, had not come up just then and made everybody stare at
them, I could have roused the crowd to take my side. The same evening I
went to my son-in-law-he is employed in the temple of Neith too, you
know,--and begged him to make every effort to find out what had become of
the papers. The good fellow has never forgotten the handsome dowry you
gave my Baner when he married her, and in three days he came and told me
he had seen your beautiful chest and all the rolls it contained burnt to
ashes. I was so angry that I fell ill of the jaundice, but that did not
hinder me from sending in a written accusation to t