ng which did not at once come to him, to have met with an
obstacle between his will and the carrying out of that will, to have
hurled like a javelin a desire which had not struck its mark,--that was
what amazed the Pharaoh who dwelt in the higher plane of almightiness.
For one moment it occurred to him that he was only a man.

So he wandered through the vast courts, down the avenues of giant
pillars, passed under the mighty pylons, between the lofty monolithic
obelisks and the colossi which gazed upon him with their great,
frightened eyes. He traversed the hypostyle hall and the maze of the
granitic forest with its one hundred and sixty-two pillars tall and
strong as towers. The figures of gods, of kings, and of symbolic beings
painted on the walls seemed to fix upon him their great eyes, drawn in
black upon their profile masks, the uraeus snakes to twist and swell
their hoods, the bird-faced divinities to stretch out their necks, the
globes to spread over the cornices their fluttering wings of stone. A
strange, fantastic life animated these curious figures, and peopled with
living swarms the solitudes of the vast hall, which was as large as an
ordinary palace. The divinities, the ancestors, the chimerical
monsters, eternally motionless, were amazed to see the Pharaoh,
ordinarily as calm as themselves, striding up and down as though he were
a man of flesh, and not of porphyry and basalt.

Weary of roaming about that mysterious forest of pillars that upbore a
granite heaven, like a lion which seeks the track of its prey and scents
with its wrinkled nose the moving sand of the desert, the Pharaoh
ascended one of the terraces of the palace, stretched himself on a low
couch, and sent for Timopht.

Timopht appeared at once, and advanced from the top of the stairs to the
Pharaoh, prostrating himself at every step. He dreaded the wrath of the
master whose favour he had, for a moment, hoped he had gained. Would the
skill he had shown in discovering the home of Tahoser be a sufficient
excuse for the crime of losing track of the lovely maid?

Raising one knee and leaving the other bent, Timopht stretched out his
arms with a supplicating gesture.

"O King, do not doom me to death or to be beaten beyond measure. The
beauteous Tahoser, the daughter of Petamounoph, on whom your desire
deigned to descend as the hawk swoops down upon the dove, will doubtless
be found; and when, returned to her home, she sees your magnificent
gifts