pped his horses, and it was truly
marvellous to see these noble animals, which seemed left to themselves,
guided by imperceptible movements and preserving an unchangingly regular
gait.

On one of these chariots the elegant Ahmosis, Nofre's protege, showed
his tall figure and cast his glance over the multitude, trying to make
out Tahoser.

The trampling of the horses held in with difficulty, the thunder of the
bronze-bound wheels, the metallic justling of weapons, imparted to the
procession an imposing and formidable character well calculated to
strike terror into the bravest souls. Helmets, plumes, corselets covered
with green, red, and yellow scales, gilded bows, brazen swords, flashed
and gleamed fiercely in the sun shining in the heavens above the Libyan
chain like a great Osiris eye, and one felt that the charge of such an
army must necessarily sweep the nations before it even as the storm
drives the light straw. Under these numberless wheels the earth
resounded and trembled as if in the throes of an earthquake.

Next to the chariots came the infantry battalions marching in order, the
men carrying their shields on the left arm, and a lance, a javelin, a
bow, a sling, or an axe in the right hand. The soldiers wore helmets
adorned with two horse-hair tails. Their bodies were protected by a
cuirass of crocodile-skin; their impassible look, the perfect regularity
of their motions, their coppery complexion, deepened still more by the
recent expedition to the burning regions of Upper Egypt, the desert dust
which lay upon their clothes, inspired admiration for their discipline
and courage. With such soldiers Egypt could conquer the world.

Then came the troops of the allies, easily known by the barbarous shape
of their helmets, like mitres cut off, or else surmounted with a
crescent stuck on a point. Their broad-bladed swords, their saw-edged
axes, must have inflicted incurable wounds.

Slaves carried the booty announced by the herald on their shoulders or
on stretchers, and belluaria led panthers, wild-cats, crawling as if
they sought to hide themselves, ostriches flapping their wings, giraffes
overtopping the crowd with their long necks, and even brown bears taken,
it was said, in the Mountains of the Moon.

The King had long since entered his palace, yet the defile was still
proceeding. As he passed the revetment on which stood Tahoser and Nofre,
the Pharaoh, whose litter, borne upon the shoulders of oeris, placed