found themselves in a hall distinguished by a
great number of doors. Here a tablet was pushed aside in the floor,
discovering an opening through which they descended, and again advanced
through a narrow corridor to a chamber which had no doors. But the
guide touched one hieroglyph of many, and the wall moved aside before
them.

Ramses tried to remember the direction in which they were going, but
soon his attention was bewildered. He noted, however, that they passed
hurriedly through great halls, small chambers, narrow corridors, that
they climbed up or descended, that some halls had a multitude of doors
and others none whatever. He observed at once that the guide at each
new entrance dropped one bead from his long rosary, and sometimes, by
the light of the torch, he compared the indications on the beads with
those on the walls.

"Where are we now?" asked the pharaoh on a sudden, "beneath the earth,
or above it?"

"We are in the power of the gods!" replied his neighbor.

After a number of turns and passages the pharaoh again said,

"But I think that we are here for the second time."

The priests were silent, but he who carried the torch held his light to
the walls in one and another place, and Ramses, while looking,
confessed in spirit that they had not been there before.

In a small chamber without doors they lowered the light, and the
pharaoh saw on the pavement dried, black remains, covered with decayed
clothing.

"That," said the overseer of the building, "is the body of a Phoenician
who, during the sixteenth dynasty, tried to break into the labyrinth;
he got thus far."

"Did they kill him?" inquired Ramses.

"He died of hunger."

The party had advanced again about half an hour, when the priest who
bore the torch lighted a niche in the corridor where also dried remains
were lying.

"This," said the overseer, "is the body of a Nubian priest, who in the
time of thy grandfather, holiness, tried to enter the labyrinth."

The pharaoh made no inquiry as to what happened to this man. He had the
impression of being in some depth and the feeling that the edifice
would crush him. Of taking bearings amid those hundreds of corridors,
halls, and chambers, he had no thought any longer. He did not even wish
to explain to himself by what miracle those stone walls opened, or why
pavements sank before him.

"Samentu will do nothing," said he in spirit. "He will perish like
these two, whom I must even mention to him