and none of their plans are hidden from me.
A hundred roads lie before me, when they don't know whether to go out
or in; and where they rush heedlessly forwards I see the abyss that they
are running to."

"And nevertheless you come to me?" said the old woman sarcastically.

"I want your advice," said Nemu seriously. "Four eyes see more than one,
and the impartial looker-on sees clearer than the player; besides you
are bound to help me."

The old woman laughed loud in astonishment. "Bound!" she said, "I? and
to what if you please?"

"To help me," replied the dwarf, half in entreaty, and half in reproach.
"You deprived me of my growth, and reduced me to a cripple."

"Because no one is better off than you dwarfs," interrupted the witch.

Nemu shook his head, and answered sadly--

"You have often said so--and perhaps for many others, who are born in
misery like me--perhaps-you are right; but for me--you have spoilt my
life; you have crippled not my body only but my soul, and have condemned
me to sufferings that are nameless and unutterable."

The dwarf's big head sank on his breast, and with his left hand he
pressed his heart.

The old woman went up to him kindly.

"What ails you?" she asked, "I thought it was well with you in Mena's
house."

"You thought so?" cried the dwarf. "You who show me as in a mirror what
I am, and how mysterious powers throng and stir in me? You made me what
I am by your arts; you sold me to the treasurer of Rameses, and he gave
me to the father of Mena, his brother-in-law. Fifteen years ago! I was
a young man then, a youth like any other, only more passionate, more
restless, and fiery than they. I was given as a plaything to the young
Mena, and he harnessed me to his little chariot, and dressed me out with
ribbons and feathers, and flogged me when I did not go fast enough. How
the girl--for whom I would have given my life--the porter's daughter,
laughed when I, dressed up in motley, hopped panting in front of the
chariot and the young lord's whip whistled in my ears wringing the sweat
from my brow, and the blood from my broken heart. Then Mena's father
died, the boy, went to school, and I waited on the wife of his steward,
whom Katuti banished to Hermonthis. That was a time! The little daughter
of the house made a doll of me,

[Dolls belonging to the time of the Pharaohs are preserved in the
museums, for instance, the jointed ones at Leyden.]

laid me in the cradle, and made