he magistrates. The
wretches,--I suppose only because they were priests too,--refused to take
any notice of me or my complaint. Then I sent in a petition to the king,
and was turned away there too with the shameful threat, that I should be
considered guilty of high treason if I mentioned the papers again. I
valued my tongue too much to take any further steps, but the ground burnt
under my feet; I could not stay in Egypt, I wanted to see you, tell you
what they had done to you, and call on you, who are more powerful than
your poor servant, to revenge yourself. And besides, I wanted to see the
black box safe in your hands, lest they should take that from me too. And
so, old man as I am, with a sad heart I left my home and my grandchildren
to go forth into this foreign Typhon's land. Ah, the little lad was too
sharp! As I was kissing him, he said: 'Stay with us, grandfather. If the
foreigners make you unclean, they won't let me kiss you any more.' Baner
sends you a hearty greeting, and my son-in-law told me to say he had
found out that Psamtik, the crown-prince, and your rival, Petammon, had
been the sole causes of this execrable deed. I could not make up my mind
to trust myself on that Typhon's sea, so I travelled with an Arabian
trading caravan as far as Tadmor,--[Palmyra]--the Phoenician palm-tree
station in the wilderness," and then on to Carchemish, on the Euphrates,
with merchants from Sidon. The roads from Sardis and from Phoenicia meet
there, and, as I was sitting very weary in the little wood before the
station, a traveller arrived with the royal post-horses, and I saw at
once that it was the former commander of the Greek mercenaries."

"And I," interrupted Phanes, "recognized just as soon in you, the longest
and most quarrelsome old fellow that had ever come across my path. Oh,
how often I've laughed to see you scolding the children, as they ran
after you in the street whenever you appeared behind your master with the
medicine-chest. The minute I saw you too I remembered a joke which the
king once made in his own way, as you were both passing by. 'The old
man,' he said, reminds me of a fierce old owl followed by a flight of
small teasing birds, and Nebenchari looks as if he had a scolding wife,
who will some day or other reward him for healing other people's eyes by
scratching out his own!'"

"Shameful!" said the old man, and burst into a flood of execrations.

Nebenchari had been listening to his servant's tale