drink only wine, and that of
good quality."

He clapped his hands, and again there was movement. The laborers gave
the officials bags of wheat, baskets of fruit, wine, game. These
objects the officials as before placed near the throne, but in
quantities considerably smaller. On the pharaoh's platform there was no
longer a mountain of products, but the platform of the officials was
covered.

"This is the Egypt of our day," continued Pentuer. "Laborers are in
indigence, scribes are wealthy, the treasury is not so full as it once
was. But now."

He gave a sign, and a thing unexpected took place there before them.

Certain hands seized grain, fruit, stuffs from the platforms of the
pharaoh and the officials; and when the amount of the goods had
decreased greatly, those same hands began to seize and lead away
laborers, their wives and children.

The spectators looked with amazement at the peculiar methods of those
mysterious persons. Suddenly some one cried out,

"Those are Phoenicians! They plunder us in that way."

"That is it, holy fathers," said Pentuer. "Those are the hands of
Phoenicians concealed in the midst of us; they plunder the pharaoh and
the scribes, and lead away laborers captive when there is nothing to
drag from them."

"Yes! They are jackals! A curse on Phoenicians! Expel them, the
wretches!" cried the priests. "It is they who inflict the greatest
damage on Egypt."

Not all, however, shouted in that way.

When there was silence, Pentuer commanded to take the torches to the
other side of the court, and thither he conducted his hearers. There
were no tableaux there, but a kind of industrial exhibition.

"Be pleased to look," said he. "During the nineteenth dynasty
foreigners sent us these things: we received perfumes from Punt; gold,
iron weapons, and chariots of war came from Syria. That is all.

"But Egypt manufactured in those days. Look at these immense pitchers,
how many forms, and what a variety of colors.

"Or the furniture: that armchair was made of ten thousand pieces of
gold, mother-of-pearl, and woods of various hues. Look at the robes of
that period: what embroidery, what delicacy of material, how many
colors! And the bronze swords, the brooches, bracelets, earrings and
implements of tillage and crafts of various descriptions. All these
were made in this country during the nineteenth dynasty."

He passed to the next group of objects.

"But today, look: the pitchers are small a