isible 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 at three well-sweeps. One poured water
from the river into the lowest well; another drew from the lowest and
raised water two yards higher to a middle place; the third raised water
from the middle to the highest place. There some people, also naked,
drew water in buckets, and irrigated beds of vegetables, or watered
trees from sprinkling-pots.

The movement of the sweeps going down and rising, the turn of the
buckets, the gushing of the pots was so rhythmic that the men who
caused it might be thought automatons. No one of them spoke to his
neighbor, no man changed place or looked about him; he merely bent and
rose in one single method from daylight until evening, from one month
to another, and doubtless he had worked thus from childhood and would
so work till death took him.

"And creatures such as these," thought the prince, as he looked at
their toil, "desire me to realize their imaginings. What change in the
state can they wish? Is it that he who draws from the lowest well
should go to the highest, or instead of pouring from a bucket should
sprinkle trees with a watering pot?"