e most monstrous of crimes. You are all deserving of death.
Such is the decree of the God.

ALL. O Ammon! Pity! Pity! Ammon!

HIGH PRIEST. Cease your sobs! Cease your cries! Cease your useless
prayers! Hear the God who speaks through my mouth.

ALL. Be kind! Thou! Thou! Have pity! Beseech the God for us, we implore
thee! We would not die. Not death! not death! not death!

HIGH PRIEST. Yes--I--I have pity on you. But your crime is so great!
Have you considered well the enormity of your sin? None can remember to
have seen the like. The Gods! To overthrow the Gods! And such Gods!
Ammon and Thoueris! I would I might disarm their wrath. But what shall I
offer them in your name that may equal your offence?

PEOPLE. All! Take all we possess, but spare our lives.

HIGH PRIEST. All you possess! 'Tis little enough.

PEOPLE. Take our crops.

HIGH PRIEST. And who then will feed you? Already you pay tithes. I will
offer a fourth of your harvests for ten years. But 'tis little. Even did
I say you would give half of all that is in your homes, should I
succeed? And would you give it me?

PEOPLE. Yes! Yes!

HIGH PRIEST. Still it will not be enough. Hear what the God hath
breathed to me. There must be prayers, ceaseless prayers in the temple.
Every year ten of your daughters must enter the house of the God to be
consecrated.

PEOPLE. Our daughters! Ammon! Our daughters!

HIGH PRIEST. The God is good! The God is good! Lo! I hear him pronounce
the words of pardon. But further, you must needs assist the Pharaoh to
carry out the divine commands. Ammon wills that the Ethiopian infidels
be chastised. All who are of an age to fight will join the army, that is
on the eve of departure.

PEOPLE [_in consternation_] Oh! the war! the war!

HIGH PRIEST. Proud Ethiopia threatens invasion to Egypt. You must defend
your tombs, your homes, and your women. Would you become slaves of the
blacks?

PEOPLE. No, no, we would not!

HIGH PRIEST. You will go to punish the foes of your kings?

PEOPLE. We will go.

HIGH PRIEST. And what will be your reward? Know you not that victory
will be yours, because the god is with you. And if some fall in battle,
should we not all envy their fate, since they leave this world to go
towards Osiris. The arrows of your foes will fall harmless at your feet,
like wounded birds. Their swords shall bend on your invulnerable bodies.
The fire they light against you will become as perfumed water. All this
you kn