ible world, and
who is life eternal."

When the gate had closed, the priest took Ramses by the hand, and in
the gloom amid the immense columns of the forecourt he led him to the
dwelling assigned to him. It was a small cell lighted by a lamp. On the
stone pavement lay a bundle of dry grass; in a corner stood a pitcher
of water, and near it was a barley cake.

"I see that here I shall have rest indeed after my occupations with the
nomarchs," said Ramses, joyously.

"Think of eternity," replied the priest; and he withdrew.

This answer struck Ramses disagreeably. Though he was hungry, he did
not wish to eat a cake or drink water. He sat on the grass, and looking
at his feet wounded from the journey, asked himself why he had come,
why he had put himself voluntarily out of his office.

Seeing the walls of the cell and its poverty, he recalled the years of
his boyhood passed at a priests' school. How many blows of sticks he
had received there, how many nights he had passed on a stone floor as
punishment! Even then Ramses felt the hatred and fear which he had felt
before toward that harsh priest who to all his prayers and questions
answered only with, "Think of eternity."

After some months of uproar to drop into such silence, to exchange the
court of a prince for obscurity and loneliness, and instead of feasts,
women, and music, to feel around and above him the weight of walls! "I
have gone mad! I have gone mad!" muttered Ramses.

There was a moment when he wished to leave the temple at once; but
afterward he thought that they might not open the gate to him. The
sight of his dirty legs, of the ashes falling out of his hair, the
roughness of his penitential rags, all this disgusted him. If he had
had his sword even! But would he, dressed as he was in that place, dare
to use it?

He felt an overpowering dread, and that sobered him. He remembered that
the gods in temples send down fear on men, and that this fear must be
the beginning of wisdom.

"Moreover, I am the viceroy and the heir of the pharaoh," thought he;
"who will harm me in this temple?"

He rose and went out of the cell. He found himself in a broad court
surrounded by columns. The stars were shining brightly; hence he saw at
one end of the court an immense pylon, at the other an open entrance to
the temple.

He went thither. At the door there was gloom, and somewhere far off
flamed a number of lamps, as if in the air and unsupported. Looking
more atte