thinkest not of them; Thou thinkest only of those whose service is that
they begot other toilers who dipped up muddy water from the Nile, or
thrust barley balls into the mouths of their milch cows.

"But my father and I? Was not my son slain, and also a woman of my
household? Was Typhon compassionate to me in the desert? Do not my
bones ache after a long journey? Do not missiles from Libyan slings
whistle over my head? Have I a treaty with sickness, with pain, or with
death, that they should be kinder to me than to thy toilers?

"Look there: the Asiatics are sleeping, and quiet has taken possession
of their breasts; but I, their lord, have a heart full of yesterday's
cares, and of fears for the morrow. Ask a toiling man of a hundred
years whether in all his life he had as much sorrow as I have had
during my power of a few months as commander and viceroy."

Before them rose slowly from the depth of the night a wonderful shade.
It was an object fifty yards long and as high as a house of three
stories, having at its side, as it were, a five-storied tower of
uncommon structure.

"Here is the Sphinx," said the irritated prince, "purely priests' work!
Whenever I see this, in the day or the night time, the question always
tortures me: What is this, and what is the use of it? The pyramids I
understand: Almighty pharaoh wished to show his power, and, perhaps,
which was wiser, wished to secure eternal life which no thief or enemy
might take from him. Drat this Sphinx! Evidently that is our sacred
priestly order, which has a very large, wise head and lion's claws
beneath it.

"This repulsive statue, full of double meaning, which seems to exult
because we appear like locusts when we stand near it, it is neither a
man nor a beast nor a rock What is it, then? What is its meaning? Or
that smile which it has If Thou admire the everlasting endurance of the
pyramids, it smiles; if Thou go past to converse with the tombs, it
smiles. Whether the fields of Egypt are green, or Typhon lets loose his
fiery steeds, or the slave seeks his freedom in the desert, or Ramses
the Great drives conquered nations before him, it has for all one and
the same changeless smile. Nineteen dynasties have passed like shadows;
but it smiles on and would smile even were the Nile to grow dry, and
were Egypt to disappear under sand fields.

"Is not that monster the more dreadful that it has a mild human visage?
Lasting itself throughout ages, it has never kno