he King,
but remained crouched on his heels, a prey to the bitterest anguish.

"Come, Timopht!" said His Majesty, "rise up, run, and despatch
emissaries on all sides; have temples, palaces, houses, villas, gardens,
yea, the meanest of huts searched, and find Tahoser. Send chariots along
every road; have the Nile traversed in every direction by boats; go
yourself and ask those whom you meet if they have not seen such and such
a woman. Violate the tombs, if she has taken refuge in the abodes of
death, far within some passage or hypogeum. Seek her out as Isis sought
her husband Osiris torn away by Typhon, and, dead or alive, bring her
back,--or by the uraeus of my pschent, by the lotus of my sceptre, you
shall perish in hideous tortures."

Timopht went off with the speed of a deer to carry out the orders of the
Pharaoh, who, somewhat calmer, took one of those poses of tranquil
grandeur which the sculptors love to give to the colossi set up at the
gates of the temples and palaces, and calm as beseems those whose
sandals, covered with drawings of captives with bound elbows, rest upon
the heads of nations, he waited.

A roar as of thunder sounded around the palace, and had the sky not been
of unchangeable, lapis-lazuli blue it might have been thought that a
storm had burst unexpectedly. The sound was caused by the swiftly
revolving wheels of the chariots galloping off in every direction, and
shaking the very ground. Soon the Pharaoh perceived from the top of the
terrace the boats cleaving the stream under the impulse of the rowers,
and his messengers scattering on the other bank through the country. The
Libyan chain, with its rosy light, and its sapphire blue shadows,
bounded the horizon and formed a background to the giant buildings of
Rameses, Amenhotep, and Amen Phtases; the pylons with their sloping
angles, the walls with their spreading cornices, the colossi with their
hands resting on their knees, stood out, gilded by the sunbeams, their
size undiminished by distance.

But the Pharaoh looked not at these proud edifices. Amid the clumps of
palms and the cultivated fields, houses and painted kiosks rose here and
there, standing out against the brilliant colours of the vegetation.

Under one of these roofs, on one of these terraces, no doubt, Tahoser
was hiding; and by some spell he wished he could raise them or make them
transparent.

Hours followed on hours. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, casting
its last