pine-trees, they nourished him with chopped meat; they gave
him strong herbs with milk and old wine. These effective means
strengthened his holiness for something like a week yet; then a new
faintness announced itself, and to overcome that they forced their lord
to drink the fresh blood of calves descended from Apes.

But neither did this blood help for a long time, and they found it
needful to turn for advice to the high priest of the temple of the
wicked god Set.

Amid general fear, the gloomy priest entered the bedchamber of his
holiness. He looked at the sick pharaoh and prescribed a dreadful
remedy.

"It is needful," said he, "to give the pharaoh blood of innocent
children to drink; each day a full goblet."

The priests and magnates in the chamber were dumb when they heard this
prescription. Then they whispered that the children of earth-tillers
were best for the purpose, since the children of priests and great
lords lost their innocence even in infancy.

"It is all one to me whose children they are," said the cruel priest,
"if only his holiness has fresh blood given him daily."

The pharaoh, lying on the bed with closed eyes, heard that gory
counsel, and the whispers of the frightened courtiers. And when one of
the physicians asked Herhor timidly if it were possible to take
measures to seek proper children, Ramses XII recovered. He fixed his
wise eyes on those present,

"The crocodile will not devour its own little ones," said he, "a jackal
or a hyena will give its life for its whelps, and am I to drink the
blood of Egyptian infants, who are my children? Indeed, I never could
have believed that anyone would dare to prescribe means so unworthy."

The priest of the evil god fell to the pavement, and explained that in
Egypt no one had ever drunk the blood of infants but that the infernal
powers returned health by it. Such means at least were used in
Phoenicia and Assyria.

"Shame on thee!" replied the pharaoh, "for mentioning in the palace of
Egyptian sovereigns disgusting subjects. Knowest Thou not that
Phoenicians and Assyrians are barbarous? But among us the most
unenlightened earth-tiller would not believe that blood, shed without
cause, could be of service to any one."

Thus spoke he who was equal to immortals. The courtiers covered their
faces, spotted now with shame, and the high priest of Set went silently
out of the chamber.

Then Herhor, to save the quenching life of the sovereign, had recour