the night preceding thy birth I fell
asleep at the bedside of my wife. I dreamed that she was lying on the
shores of the Nile, and complained to me of pain in the breast. Bending
down, I beheld a cypress-tree springing from her heart. It grew larger
and larger, black and spreading, twined its roots around thy mother and
strangled her. A cold shiver seized me, and I was on the point of flying
from the spot, when a fierce hurricane came from the East, struck the
tree and overthrew it, so that its spreading branches were cast into the
Nile. Then the waters ceased to flow; they congealed, and, in place
of the river, a gigantic mummy lay before me. The towns on its banks
dwindled into huge funereal urns, surrounding the vast corpse of the
Nile as in a tomb. At this I awoke and caused the interpreters of dreams
to be summoned. None could explain the vision, till at last the priests
of the Libyan Ammon gave me the following interpretation 'Tentcheta will
die in giving birth to a son. The cypress, which strangled its mother,
is this gloomy, unhappy man. In his days a people shall come from the
East and shall make of the Nile, that is of the Egyptians, dead bodies,
and of their cities ruinous heaps; these are the urns for the dead,
which thou sawest."

Psamtik listened as if turned into stone; his father continued; "Thy
mother died in giving birth to thee; fiery-red hair, the mark of the
sons of Typhon, grew around thy brow; thou becam'st a gloomy man.
Misfortune pursued thee and robbed thee of a beloved wife and four of
thy children. The astrologers computed that even as I had been born
under the fortunate sign of Amman, so thy birth had been watched over
by the rise of the awful planet Seb. Thou..." But here Amasis broke off,
for Psamtik, in the anguish produced by these fearful disclosures had
given way, and with sobs and groans, cried:

"Cease, cruel father! spare me at least the bitter words, that I am the
only son in Egypt who is hated by his father without cause!"

Amasis looked down on the wretched man who had sunk to the earth before
him, his face hidden in the folds of his robe, and the father's wrath
was changed to compassion. He thought of Psamtik's mother, dead forty
years before, and felt he had been cruel in inflicting this poisonous
wound on her son's soul. It was the first time for years, that he had
been able to feel towards this cold strange man, as a father and a
comforter. For the first time he saw tears