The Pharaoh And The Priest Part 24

The most worthy ruler took farewell of his heir very graciously; but the direction of state affairs during his absence he left with Herhor.

Rameses felt this proof of want of confidence so greatly that for three days he took no food and did not leave his villa; he only wept.

Later he ceased to shave, and transferred himself to Sarah's house, so as not to meet Herhor or annoy his own mother, whom he considered the cause of his failures.

On the following day Tutmosis visited him in this retreat, bringing two boats filled with musicians and dancers, and a third containing baskets of food and flowers, with pitchers of wine. But the prince commanded the musicians and dancers to depart, and taking Tutmosis to the garden, he said,--

"Of course my mother--may she live through eternity!--sent thee to separate me from the Jewess? Tell her worthiness that were Herhor to become not merely viceroy, but the son of my father, I should do that which pleases me. I know how to do it. To-day they wish to deprive me of Sarah, and to-morrow they would take my power from me; I will show them that I shall not renounce anything."

The prince was irritated. Tutmosis shrugged his shoulders, and remarked finally,--

"As a whirlwind sweeps a bird into a desert, so does anger cast a man on the sh.o.r.es of injustice. How canst thou wonder if the priests are displeased because the heir to the throne has connected his life with a woman of another country and a strange religion? Sarah does not please them, especially since thou hast her alone. Hadst thou a number of various women, like all n.o.ble youths, they would not mind the Jewess. But have they done her harm? No. On the contrary, even some priest defended her against a raging crowd which it pleased thee to liberate from imprisonment."

"But my mother?"

Tutmosis laughed.

"Thy worthy mother loves thee as her own eyes and heart. Of course Sarah does not please her, either, but dost thou know what her worthiness said once to me? This,--that I should entice Sarah from thee. What a jest on her part! To this I answered with a second jest: 'Rameses has given me a brace of hunting dogs and two Syrian horses because he has grown tired of them; perhaps some day he will give me his mistress too, of course I shall have to take her with other things.'"

"Do not think of it. I would not give Sarah to any man, were it only for this, because of her my father has not appointed me viceroy."

Tutmosis shook his head.

"Thou art greatly mistaken," answered he, "so much mistaken that I am terrified. Dost thou not really understand the causes of the disfavor?

Every enlightened Egyptian knows them."

"I know nothing."

"So much the worse," said the anxious Tutmosis. "Thou dost not know, then, that warriors, since the manuvres, especially Greek warriors, drink thy health in every dramshop."

"They got money to do so."

"True; but not to cry out, with all the voice that is in them, that when thou shalt succeed to his holiness--may he live through eternity!--thou wilt begin a great war, after which there will be changes in Egypt."

"What changes? And who is the man who during the life of the pharaoh may dare to speak of the plans of his successor?"

Now the prince grew gloomy.

"That is one thing, but I will tell thee another," said Tutmosis, "for misfortunes, like hyenas, never come singly. Dost thou know that the lowest people sing songs about thee,--sing how thou didst free the attackers from prison, and what is worse, they repeat again, that, when thou shalt succeed his holiness, rents will be abolished. It must be added that when common people speak of injustice and rents, disturbances follow; and either a foreign enemy attacks our weakened state, or Egypt is divided into as many parts as there are nomarchs.

Finally, judge for thyself, is it proper that any man's name should be mentioned oftener than the pharaoh's, and that any man should stand between the people and our lord? If thou permit, I will tell how priests look on this matter."

"Of course, speak."

"Well, a very wise priest who from the summit of the temple of Amon examines celestial movements, has thought out this statement: 'The pharaoh is the sun, the heir to the throne the moon. When the moon follows the G.o.d of light from afar, we have brightness in the daytime and clearness at night. When the moon wishes to be too near the sun, it disappears itself and the nights are dark. But if the moon stands before the sun there is an eclipse, and in the world great terror--'"

"And all this babble," interrupted Rameses, "goes to the ears of his holiness. Misfortune on my head! Would that I had never been the son of a pharaoh!"

"The pharaoh, as a G.o.d upon earth, knows everything; but he is too mighty to care for the drunken shouts of soldiers or the whispers of earth-tillers. He understands that every Egyptian would die for him, and thou first of all."

"Thou hast spoken truth!" answered the anxious prince. "But in all this I see new vileness and deceit of the priests," added he, rousing himself. "It is I, then, who hide the majesty of our lord, because I free the innocent from prison, or do not let my tenant torture earth-workers with unjust tribute. But when his worthiness Herhor manages the army, appoints leaders, negotiates with foreign princes, and directs my father to spend his time in prayers--"

Tutmosis covered his ears, and, stamping, cried,--

"Be silent! be silent! every word of thine is blasphemy. His holiness alone directs the state, and whatever is done on earth proceeds from his will. Herhor is a servant of the pharaoh and does what his lord enjoins on him. If thou wilt convince thyself--oh, that my words be not ill understood--"

The prince grew so gloomy that Tutmosis broke off the conversation and took farewell of his friend at the earliest. When he sat down in his boat, which was furnished with a baldachin and curtains, he drew a deep breath and draining a large goblet of wine, thought,--

"Brr! I thank the G.o.ds for not giving me such a character as that which Rameses has. He is a most unhappy man in the happiest conditions. He might have the most beautiful women in Memphis, but he sticks to one to annoy his mother. Meanwhile it is not his mother that he annoys, but all the virtuous virgins and faithful wives who are withering from sadness that the heir to the throne, and moreover a youth of great comeliness, does not s.n.a.t.c.h from them virtue or force them to unfaithfulness. He might not only drink but even swim in the best wine; meanwhile he prefers the wretched camp beer, and bread rubbed with garlic. Whence came these low inclinations? I cannot imagine. Or was it that the worthy Nikotris in her critical period looked at workmen while they were eating?

"He might do nothing from daylight till darkness. If he wished, the most famous lords, with their wives, sisters, and daughters, would serve food to him. He not only stretches forth his own hands to take food, but, to the torment of our n.o.ble youths, he washes himself, dresses himself, and his barber spends whole days in snaring birds and thus wastes his abilities.

"O Rameses, Rameses!" sighed the exquisite. "Is it possible that fas.h.i.+on should be developed in the time of such a prince? We wear the same ap.r.o.ns from one year to another, and we retain wigs, only thanks to court dignitaries, for Rameses will not wear any wig. This is a great offence to the whole order of n.o.bles. And all brought about by cursed politics, brr! Oh, how happy I am that I need not divine what they are thinking of in Tyre or Nineveh; break my head over wages for the army; calculate how many people have been added to Egypt or taken from it, and what rents must be collected. It is a terrible thing to say to one's self, 'My tenant does not pay what I need and expend, but what the increase of the Nile permits.'"

Thus meditated the exquisite Tutmosis, while he strengthened his anxious soul with golden wine. Before the boat had sailed up to Memphis, heavy sleep had mastered him in such wise that his slaves had to carry their lord to the litter.

After the departure of Tutmosis, which resembled a flight, the heir fell to thinking deeply; he even felt fear.

Rameses was a sceptic. As a pupil of the priests, and a member of the highest aristocracy, he knew that when certain priests had fasted many months and mortified their senses they summoned spirits, while others spoke of spirits as a fancy, a deception. He had seen, too, that Apis, the sacred bull before which all Egypt fell prostrate, received at times heavy blows of a cane from inferior priests, who gave the beast food and brought cows to him.

He understood, finally, that his father, Rameses XII., who for the common crowd was a G.o.d who lived through eternity, and the all-commanding lord of this world, was really just such a person as others, only a little more weakly than ordinary old men, and very much limited in power by the priestly order.

The prince saw all this, and jeered in his soul and even in public at many things. But all his infidelity fell before the actual truth,--that no one was permitted to trifle with the t.i.tles of the pharaoh.

Rameses knew the history of his country, and he remembered that in Egypt many things were forgiven the mighty. A great lord might ruin a ca.n.a.l, kill a man in secret, revile the G.o.ds privately, take presents from amba.s.sadors of foreign states, but two sins were not forgiven,--the betrayal of priestly secrets, and treason to the pharaoh. A man who committed one or the other disappeared, sometimes after a year, from among his friends and servants. But where he had been put or what had been done with him, no one even dared to mention.

Rameses felt that he was on an incline of this sort from the time that the army and the people began to mention his name and speak of certain plans of his,--changes in the state, future wars. Thinking of this, the prince felt as if a nameless crowd of rebels and unfortunates were pus.h.i.+ng him violently to the point of the highest obelisk, from which he must tumble down and be crushed into jelly.

Later on, when, after the longest life of his father possible, he became pharaoh, he would have the right and the means to accomplish many deeds of which no one in Egypt could even think without terror.

But to-day he must in truth have a care, lest they declare him a traitor and a rebel against the fundamental laws of Egypt. In that state there was one visible 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 gus.h.i.+ng 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?"

Anger rose to his head, and humiliation crushed him because he, the heir to the throne, thanks to the fables of creatures like those who nodded all their lives over wells of dirty water, was not now the vice-pharaoh.

At that moment he heard a low rustle among the trees, and delicate hands rested on his shoulder.

"Well, Sarah?" asked the prince, without turning his head.

"Thou art sad, my lord. Moses was not so delighted at sight of the promised land as I was at those words of thine: 'I am coming to live with thee.' But thou art a day and a night here, and I have not seen thy smile yet. Thou dost not even speak to me, but movest about in gloom, and at night thou dost not fondle me, but only sighest."