ut it seems to him quite in order
that all the treasure of the pharaohs should go to the labyrinth.

"Finally here is Pentuer. What a strange person he is! He wants me to
give earth-tillers food, land, and ever-recurring holidays. All this
would decrease my income, which even now is insufficient. But if I say
to him: help me to take the pharaoh's treasures from the priesthood, he
calls that godlessness and the quenching of light in Egypt. Strange
man, he would be glad to turn the state bottom upwards, so far as
relates to the good of earth tillers, but he would not venture to seize
a high priest and lead him forth to prison. With the utmost composure
he commands me to renounce half my income, but I am sure that he would
not dare to take a copper uten out of the labyrinth."

The pharaoh smiled, and again he meditated.

"Each man wants to be happy himself; but if Thou wish to give happiness
to all men, each one will seize thy hand as he would if Thou wert
drawing an aching tooth from him.

"Therefore a pharaoh must have decision. Therefore my divine father did
ill when he neglected the workers and trusted beyond bounds in the
priesthood. He left me a grievous inheritance, but I will improve it.

"At the Soda Lakes there was also a difficult question, more difficult
than this one. Here are only gabblers and timid cowards; there stood
armed men ready to go to death.

"One battle will open our eyes more widely than tens of years in
peaceful management. Whoso says to himself, 'I will burst through this
hindrance,' will burst through it. But he who hesitates must yield."

Darkness came. In the palace the watches were changed, and in the
remoter halls torches were lighted. But no one dared enter the
sovereign's chamber unless commanded.

Ramses, wearied by sleeplessness, by the journey of the day previous,
by the occupations of that day, dropped into an armchair. It seemed to
him that he had been pharaoh for centuries, and he could not believe
that one day had not passed since he had been at the pyramids.

"One day? Impossible!"

Then he thought that perhaps the spirits of the former pharaohs had
settled in the heart of their heir. It must be so, for otherwise whence
could such a feeling of age or remoteness settle down in him? And why
did governing the state seem today a simple thing, while two months
before he was alarmed when he thought that he could not govern.

"One day?" repeated he, in spirit. "But I am a tho