"Ye see this figure which is thirty yards wide, but only forty-five
yards in length. Why is this? Because there are in it only six
quadrangles, for at present Egypt has not eight, but only six millions
of inhabitants. Consider, besides, that as the former figure was
composed exclusively of red Egyptian beans in the present one are
immense strips of black, yellow, and white beans. For in our army and
among the people there are now very many foreigners: black Ethiopians,
yellow Syrians and Phoenicians, white Greeks and Libyans."

They interrupted him. The priests who listened began to embrace him;
Mefres was weeping.

"Never yet has there been such a prophet. One cannot imagine when he
could make such calculations," said the best mathematician in the
temple of Hator.

"Fathers," said Pentuer, "do not overestimate my services. Long years
ago in our temples the condition of the state was represented in this
manner. I have only disinterred that which later generations had in
some degree forgotten."

"But the reckoning?" asked the mathematician.

"The reckonings are continued unbrokenly in all the provinces and
temples," replied Pentuer. "The general amounts are found in the palace
of his holiness."

"But the figures?" exclaimed the mathematician.

"Our fields are arranged in just such figures, and the geometers of the
state study them at school."

"We know not what to admire most in this priest, his wisdom or his
humility," said Mefres. "Since we have such a man, the gods have not
forgotten us."

At that moment the guard watching on the pylons of the temple summoned
those present to prayer.

"In the evening I will finish the explanations," said Pentuer; "now I
will say a few words in addition.

"Ye inquire, worthy fathers, why I use beans for these pictures. I do
so because a grain put in the ground brings a harvest to the husbandmen
yearly; so a man brings tribute every year to the treasury.

"If in any province two million less beans are sown than in past years,
the following harvest will be notably less, and the earth-tillers will
have a poorer income. In the state also, when two millions of
population are gone, the inflow of taxes must diminish."

Ramses listened with attention, and walked away in silence.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WHEN the priests and the heir to the throne returned to the courtyard
in the evening, several hundred torches were gleaming so brightly that
it was as clear there as in the day