e, said these words: 'O lord! is it thy pleasure to eat
me? I am only a slave.' But the lion took pity, the wolf also passed
by; even the treacherous bats spared my poor head; but thou, O
Egyptian."

The man stopped; he saw the retinue of Herhor approaching. By the fan
he knew him to be a great personage, and by the panther skin, a priest.
He ran to the litter, therefore, knelt down, and struck the sand with
his forehead.

"What dost Thou wish, man?" asked the dignitary.

"O light of the sun, listen to me!" cried the slave. "May there be no
groans in thy chamber, may no misfortune follow thee! May thy works
continue, and may the current not be interrupted when Thou shalt sail
by the Nile to the other shore."

"I ask what thy wish is," repeated Herhor.

"Kind lord," said the man, "leader without caprice, who conquerest the
false and createst the true, who art the father of the poor, the
husband of the widow, clothing for the motherless, permit me to spread
thy name as the equal of justice, most noble of the nobles." [Authentic
speech of a slave.]

"He wishes that this canal be not filled in," said Eunana.

Herhor shrugged his shoulders and pushed toward the place where they
were filling the canal. Then the despairing man seized his feet.

"Away with this creature!" cried his worthiness, pushing back as before
the bite of a reptile.

The secretary, Pentuer, turned his head; his lean face had a grayish
color. Eunana seized the man by the shoulders and pulled, but, unable
to drag him away from the minister's feet, he summoned warriors. After
a while Herhor, now liberated, passed to the other bank of the canal,
and the warriors tore away the earth-worker, almost carrying him to the
end of the detachment. There they gave the man some tens of blows of
fists, and subalterns who always carried canes gave him some tens of
blows of sticks, and at last threw him down at the entrance to the
ravine.

Beaten, bloody, and above all terrified, the wretched slave sat on the
sand for a while, rubbed his eyes, then sprang up suddenly and ran
groaning toward the highway,

"Swallow me, O earth! Cursed be the day in which I saw the light, and
the night in which it was said, 'A man is born!' In the mantle of
justice there is not the smallest shred for a slave. The gods
themselves regard not a creature whose hands are for labor, whose mouth
was made only for weeping, and whose back is for clubs. O death, rub my
body into ashes, s