once I too was one of you. Extremes meet in all things--I know it by
experience. The greatest men will hold out a hand to a beautiful woman,
and time was when I could lead you all as with a rope. Shall I begin at
the beginning? Well--I seldom am in the mood for it now-a-days. Fifty
years ago I sang a song with this voice of mine; an old crow like me?
sing! But so it was. My father was a man of rank, the governor of Abydos;
when the first Rameses took possession of the throne my father was
faithful to the house of thy fathers, so the new king sent us all to the
gold mines, and there they all died--my parents, brothers, and sisters. I
only survived by some miracle. As I was handsome and sang well, a music
master took me into his band, brought me to Thebes, and wherever there
was a feast given in any great house, Beki was in request. Of flowers and
money and tender looks I had a plentiful harvest; but I was proud and
cold, and the misery of my people had made me bitter at an age when
usually even bad liquor tastes of honey. Not one of all the gay young
fellows, princes' sons, and nobles, dared to touch my hand. But my hour
was to come; the handsomest and noblest man of them all, and grave and
dignified too--was Assa, the old Mohar's father, and grandfather of
Pentaur--no, I should say of Paaker, the pioneer; thou hast known him.
Well, wherever I sang, he sat opposite me, and gazed at me, and I could
not take my eyes off him, and--thou canst tell the rest! no! Well, no
woman before or after me can ever love a man as I loved Assa. Why dost
thou not laugh? It must seem odd, too, to hear such a thing from the
toothless mouth of an old witch. He is dead, long since dead. I hate him!
and yet--wild as it sounds--I believe I love him yet. And he loved
me--for two years; then he went to the war with Seti, and remained a long
time away, and when I saw him again he had courted the daughter of some
rich and noble house. I was handsome enough still, but he never looked at
me at the banquets. I came across him at least twenty times, but he
avoided me as if I were tainted with leprosy, and I began to fret, and
fell ill of a fever. The doctors said it was all over with me, so I sent
him a letter in which there was nothing but these words: 'Beki is dying,
and would like to see Assa once more,' and in the papyrus I put his first
present--a plain ring. And what was the answer? a handful of gold!
Gold--gold! Thou may'st believe me, when I say