East like
Sesostris, the hero of history and legend--this was a task worthy of the
grandson of Menas, of the son of George the great and just Mukaukas.

Paula would not oppose such an enterprise; his excited imagination
pictured her indeed as a second Zenobia by his side, ready for any great
achievement, fit to aid him and to rule.

Fully possessed by this dream of the future, he had long ceased to gaze
at the glories of the sunset and was sitting with eyes fixed on the
ground. Suddenly his soaring visions were interrupted by men's voices
coming up from the street just below the terrace. He looked over and
perceived at its foot about a score of Egyptian laborers; free men,
with no degrading tokens of slavery, making their way along, evidently
against their will and yet in sullen obedience, with no thought of
resistance or evasion, though only a single Arab held them under
control.

The sight fell on his excited mood like rain on a smouldering fire, like
hail on sprouting seed. His eye, which a moment ago had sparkled
with enthusiasm, looked down with contempt and disappointment on the
miserable creatures of whose race he came. A line of bitter scorn curled
his lip, for this troop of voluntary slaves were beneath his anger--all
the more so as he more vividly pictured to himself what his people
had once been and what they were now. He did not think of all this
precisely, but as dusk fell, one scene after another from his own
experience rose before his mind's eye--occasions on which the Egyptians
had behaved ignominiously, and had proved that they were unworthy of
freedom and inured to bow in servitude. Just as one Arab was now able to
reduce a host of his fellow-countrymen to subjection, so formerly three
Greeks had held them in bondage. He had known numberless instances of
almost glad submission on the part of freeborn Egyptians--peasants,
village magnates, and officials, even on his father's estates and farms.
In Alexandria and Memphis the sons of the soil had willingly borne
the foreign yoke, allowing themselves to be thrust into the shade and
humbled by Greeks, as though they were of a baser species and origin,
so long only as their religious tenets and the subtleties of their creed
remained untouched. Then he had seen them rise and shed their blood, yet
even then only with loud outcries and a promising display of enthusiasm.
But their first defeat had been fatal and it had required only a small
number of trained