till I wished that I could
vanish away as the holy Tanofir was said to be able to do. Since this
was impossible I rushed at Bes who leapt from the table like a monkey
and, still waving the heads and talking, slipped from the hall, I know
not how, followed by the loud laughter of the guests.

Then heralds announced the coming of Pharaoh and all grew silent. He and
his company entered with pomp and we, his subjects, prostrated ourselves
in the ancient fashion.

"Rise, my guests," he cried. "Rise, my people. Above all do you rise,
Shabaka, my beloved cousin, to whom Egypt and I owe so much."

So we rose and I took my seat in a place of honour having my mother
at my side, and looked about me for Amada, but in vain. There was
the carven chair upon which she should have been among those of the
princesses, but it was empty. At first I thought that she was late, but
when time went by and she did not appear, I asked if she were ill, a
question that none seemed able to answer.

The feast went on with all the ancient ceremonies that attended the
crowning of a Pharaoh of Egypt, since there were old men who remembered
these, also the scribes and priests had them written in their books.

I took no heed of them and will not set them down. At length Pharaoh
pledged his subjects, and his subjects pledged Pharaoh. Then the doors
were opened and through them came a company of white-robed, shaven
priests bearing on a bier the body of a dead man wrapped in his
mummy-cloths. At first some laughed for this rite had not been performed
in Egypt since she passed into the hands of the Great Kings of the East
and therefore was strange to them. Then they grew silent since after
all it was solemn to see those death-bearing priests flitting in and out
between the great columns, now seen and now lost in the shadows, and to
listen to their funeral chants.

In the hush my mother whispered to me that this body was that of the
last Pharaoh of Egypt brought from his tomb, but whether this were so
I cannot say for certain. At length they brought the mummy which was
crowned with a snake-headed circlet of the royal _uraeus_ and still
draped with withered funeral wreaths, and stood it on its feet opposite
to Peroa just behind and between my mother and me in such a fashion that
it cut off the light from us.

The faint and heavy smell of the embalmer's spices struck upon my
nostrils, a dead flower from the chaplets fell upon my head and,
glancing over my