nd whispered, "Pharaoh weeps!" Like a mysterious
breath of wind it went through the palace, "Pharaoh weeps!" Then all
was still again, and the dreaming night lay over everything.

Jesus did not lie down again on the soft cushions, he rested on the
cool floor and thought. The king weeps! Arabia and India, Greece and
Rome have sent their costliest treasures to Memphis. Phoenician ships
cruise off the coasts of Gaul, Albion, and Germany in order to obtain
treasure for the great Pharaoh. His people surround him day after day
with homage, his life is at its prime. And he weeps? Was it not
perhaps that he sobbed in his dreams, or it may be laughed? But the
watchers think he weeps.

CHAPTER VII

And the days passed by. As the king had said, the boy was free. But
he stayed on at the palace because he hoped one day to find the room in
which the manuscripts were kept. He often strolled through the town
and the palm-grove down to the river to see his parents. Thousands of
slaves were working at the sluices of the stream which fertilised the
land. The overseer scourged them lustily, so that many of them fell
down exhausted and even dying. Jesus looked on and denounced such
barbarity, until he, too, received a blow. Then he went out to the
Pyramids where the Pharaohs slept, and listened if they were not
weeping. He went into the Temple of Osiris and looked at the monster
idols, fat, soulless, ugly, between the rounded pillars. He searched
the palace untiringly for the hall in which the writings were kept, and
at last he came upon it. But it was closed: its custodians were
hunting jackals and tigers in the desert. They found it dark and
dreary there among the great minds of old; the splendour and luxury of
the court did not penetrate to the hall of writings.

Then nights came again when whispers ran through the halls, "Pharaoh
weeps." And the reason, too, was whispered. He had caused the woman
he loved best to be strangled, and now the astrologers declared that
she was innocent. One day the king lay on his couch and desired that
the boy from the Nile should be summoned to fan him. As the king was
sick, Jesus agreed to go. Pharaoh was ill-humoured and impatient,
neither fan nor fanning was right, and when the boy left off that was
not right either.

Then Jesus said suddenly: "Pharaoh, you are sick."

The king stared at him in astonishment. A page dare to open his mouth
and speak to the Son of Lig