was usually almost deserted.
To-day it was thronged with foot-passengers and chariots, with riders and
litter-bearers.

Here and there negroes poured water on the road out of skins, but the
dust was so deep, that, in spite of this, it shrouded the streets and the
passengers in a dry cloud, which extended not only over the city, but
down to the harbor where the boats of the inhabitants of the Necropolis
landed their freight.

The city of the Pharaohs was in unwonted agitation, for the storm-swift
breath of rumor had spread some news which excited both alarm and hope in
the huts of the poor as well as in the palaces of the great.

In the early morning three mounted messengers had arrived from the king's
camp with heavy letter-bags, and had dismounted at the Regent's palace.

[The Egyptians were great letter-writers, and many of their letters
have come down to us, they also had established postmen, and had a
word for them in their language "fai chat."]

As after a long drought the inhabitants of a village gaze up at the black
thunder-cloud that gathers above their heads promising the refreshing
rain--but that may also send the kindling lightning-flash or the
destroying hail-storm--so the hopes and the fears of the citizens were
centred on the news which came but rarely and at irregular intervals from
the scene of war; for there was scarcely a house in the huge city which
had not sent a father, a son, or a relative to the fighting hosts of the
king in the distant northeast.

And though the couriers from the camp were much oftener the heralds of
tears than of joy; though the written rolls which they brought told more
often of death and wounds than of promotion, royal favors, and conquered
spoil, yet they were expected with soul-felt longing and received with
shouts of joy.

Great and small hurried after their arrival to the Regent's palace, and
the scribes--who distributed the letters and read the news which was
intended for public communication, and the lists of those who had fallen
or perished--were closely besieged with enquirers.

Man has nothing harder to endure than uncertainty, and generally, when in
suspense, looks forward to bad rather than to good news. And the bearers
of ill ride faster than the messengers of weal.

The Regent Ani resided in a building adjoining the king's palace. His
business-quarters surrounded an immensely wide court, and consisted of a
great number of rooms opening on to this court, in which numerous scribes
worked with their chief. On the farther side was a large, veranda-like
hall open at the front, with a roof supported by pillars.

Here Ani was accustomed to hold courts of justice, and to receive
officers, messengers, and petitioners. To-day he sat, visible to all
comers, on a costly throne in this hall, surrounded by his numerous
followers, and overlooking the crowd of people whom the guardians of the
peace guided with long staves, admitting them in troops into the court of
the "High Gate," and then again conducting them out.

What he saw and heard was nothing joyful, for from each group surrounding
a scribe arose a cry of woe. Few and far between were those who had to
tell of the rich booty that had fallen to their friends.

An invisible web woven of wailing and tears seemed to envelope the
assembly.

Here men were lamenting and casting dust upon their heads, there women
were rending their clothes, shrieking loudly, and crying as they waved
their veils "oh, my husband! oh, my father! oh, my brother!"

Parents who had received the news of the death of their son fell on each
other's neck weeping; old men plucked out their grey hair and beard;
young women beat their forehead and breast, or implored the scribes who
read out the lists to let them see for themselves the name of the beloved
one who was for ever torn from them.

The passionate stirring of a soul, whether it be the result of joy or of
sorrow, among us moderns covers its features with a veil, which it had no
need of among the ancients.

Where the loudest laments sounded, a restless little being might be seen
hurrying from group to group; it was Nemu, Katuti's dwarf, whom we know.

Now he stood near a woman of the better class, dissolved in tears because
her husband had fallen in the last battle.

"Can you read?" he asked her; "up there on the architrave is the name of
Rameses, with all his titles. Dispenser of life,' he is called. Aye
indeed; he can create--widows; for he has all the husbands killed."

Before the astonished woman could reply, he stood by a man sunk in woe,
and pulling his robe, said "Finer fellows than your son have never been
seen in Thebes. Let your youngest starve, or beat him to a cripple, else
he also will be dragged off to Syria; for Rameses needs much good
Egyptian meat for the Syrian vultures."

The old man, who had hitherto stood there in silent despair, clenched his
fist. The dwarf pointed to the Regent, and said: "If he there wielded the
sceptre, there would be fewer orphans and beggars by the Nile. To-day its
sacred waters are still sweet, but soon it will taste as salt as the
north sea with all the tears that have been shed on its banks."

It almost seemed as if the Regent had heard these words, for he rose from
his seat and lifted his hands like a man who is lamenting.

Many of the bystanders observed this action; and loud cries of anguish
filled the wide courtyard, which was soon cleared by soldiers to make
room for other troops of people who were thronging in.

While these gathered round the scribes, the Regent Ani sat with quiet
dignity on the throne, surrounded by his suite and his secretaries, and
held audiences.

He was a man at the close of his fortieth year and the favorite cousin of
the king.

Rameses I., the grandfather of the reigning monarch, had deposed the
legitimate royal family, and usurped the sceptre of the Pharaohs. He
descended from a Semitic race who had remained in Egypt at the time of
the expulsion of the Hyksos,

[These were an eastern race who migrated from Asia into Egypt,
conquered the lower Nile-valley, and ruled over it for nearly 500
years, till they were driven out by the successors of the old
legitimate Pharaohs, whose dominion had been confined to upper
Egypt.]

and had distinguished itself by warlike talents under Thotmes and
Amenophis. After his death he was succeeded by his son Seti, who sought
to earn a legitimate claim to the throne by marrying Tuaa, the
grand-daughter of Amenophis III. She presented him with an only son, whom
he named after his father Rameses. This prince might lay claim to perfect
legitimacy through his mother, who descended directly from the old house
of sovereigns; for in Egypt a noble family--even that of the
Pharaohs--might be perpetuated through women.

Seti proclaimed Rameses partner of his throne, so as to remove all doubt
as to the validity of his position. The young nephew of his wife Tuaa,
the Regent Ani, who was a few years younger than Rameses, he caused to be
brought up in the House of Seti, and treated him like his own son, while
the other members of the dethroned royal family were robbed of their
possessions or removed altogether.

Ani proved himself a faithful servant to Seti, and to his son, and was
trusted as a brother by the warlike and magnanimous Rameses, who however
never disguised from himself the fact that the blood in his own veins was
less purely royal than that which flowed in his cousin's.

It was required of the race of the Pharaohs of Egypt that it should be
descended from the Sun-god Ra, and the Pharaoh could boast of this high
descent only through his mother--Ani through both parents.

But Rameses sat on the throne, held the sceptre with a strong hand, and
thirteen young sons promised to his house the lordship over Egypt to all
eternity.

When, after the death of his warlike father, he went to fresh conquests
in the north, he appointed Ani, who had proved himself worthy as governor
of the province of Kush, to the regency of the kingdom.

A vehement character often over estimates the man who is endowed with a
quieter temperament, into whose nature he cannot throw himself, and whose
excellences he is unable to imitate; so it happened that the deliberate
and passionless nature of his cousin impressed the fiery and warlike
Rameses.

Ani appeared to be devoid of ambition, or the spirit of enterprise; he
accepted the dignity that was laid upon him with apparent reluctance, and
seemed a particularly safe person, because he had lost both wife and
child, and could boast of no heir.

He was a man of more than middle height; his features were remarkably
regular--even beautifully, cut, but smooth and with little expression.
His clear blue eyes and thin lips gave no evidence of the emotions that
filled his heart; on the contrary, his countenance wore a soft smile that
could adapt itself to haughtiness, to humility, and to a variety of
shades of feeling, but which could never be entirely banished from his
face.

He had listened with affable condescension to the complaint of a landed
proprietor, whose cattle had been driven off for the king's army, and had
promised that his case should be enquired into. The plundered man was
leaving full of hope; but when the scribe who sat at the feet of the
Regent enquired to whom the investigation of this encroachment of the
troops should be entrusted, Ani said: "Each one must bring a victim to
the war; it must remain among the things that are done, and cannot be
undone."

The Nomarch--[Chief of a Nome or district.]--of Suan, in the southern
part of the country, asked for funds for a necessary, new embankment. The
Regent listened to his eager representation with benevolence, nay with
expressions of sympathy; but assured him that the war absorbed all the
funds of the state, that the chests were empty; still he felt
inclined--even if they had not failed--to sacrifice a part of his own
income to preserve the endangered arable land of his faithful province of
Suan, to which he desired greeting.

As soon as the Nomarch had left him, he commanded that a considerable sum
should be taken out of the Treasury, and sent after the petitioner.

From time to time in the middle of conversation, he arose, and made a
gesture of lamentation, to show to the assembled mourners in the court
that he sympathized in the losses which had fallen on them.

The sun had already passed the meridian, when a disturbance, accompanied
by loud cries, took possession of the masses of people, who stood round
the scribes in the palace court.

Many men and women were streaming together towards one spot, and even the
most impassive of the Thebans present turned their attention to an
incident so unusual in this place.

A detachment of constabulary made a way through the crushing and yelling
mob, and another division of Lybian police led a prisoner towards a side
gate of the court. Before they could reach it, a messenger came up with
them, from the Regent, who desired to be informed as to what happened.

The head of the officers of public safety followed him, and with eager
excitement informed Ani, who was waiting for him, that a tiny man, the
dwarf of the Lady Katuti, had for several hours been going about in the
court, and endeavoring to poison the minds of the citizens with seditious
speeches.

Ani ordered that the misguided man should be thrown into the dungeon; but
so soon as the chief officer had left him, he commanded his secretary to
have the dwarf brought into his presence before sundown.

While he was giving this order an excitement of another kind seized the
assembled multitude.

As the sea parted and stood on the right hand and on the left of the
Hebrews, so that no wave wetted the foot of the pursued fugitives, so the
crowd of people of their own free will, but as if in reverent submission
to some high command, parted and formed a broad way, through which walked
the high-priest of the House of Seti, as, full robed and accompanied by
some of the "holy fathers," he now entered the court.

The Regent went to meet him, bowed before him, and then withdrew to the
back of the hall with him alone. "It is nevertheless incredible," said
Ameni, "that our serfs are to follow the militia!"

"Rameses requires soldiers--to conquer," replied the Regent.

"And we bread--to live," exclaimed the priest.

"Nevertheless I am commanded, at once, before the seed-time, to levy the
temple-serfs. I regret the order, but the king is the will, and I am only
the hand."

"The hand, which he makes use of to sequester ancient rights, and to open
a way to the desert over the fruitful land."

["With good management," said the first Napoleon, "the Nile
encroaches upon the desert, with bad management the desert
encroaches upon the Nile."]

"Your acres will not long remain unprovided for. Rameses will win new
victories with the increased army, and the help of the Gods."

"The Gods! whom he insults!"

"After the conclusion of peace he will reconcile the Gods by doubly rich
gifts. He hopes confidently for an early end to the war, and writes to me
that after the next battle he wins he intends to offer terms to the
Cheta. A plan of the king's is also spoken of--to marry again, and,
indeed, the daughter of the Cheta King Chetasar."

Up to this moment the Regent had kept his eyes cast down. Now he raised
them, smiling, as if he would fain enjoy Ameni's satisfaction, and asked:

"What dost thou say to this project?"

"I say," returned Ameni, and his voice, usually so stern, took a tone of
amusement, "I say that Rameses seems to think that the blood of thy
cousin and of his mother, which gives him his right to the throne, is
incapable of pollution."

"It is the blood of the Sun-god!"

"Which runs but half pure in his veins, but wholly pure in thine."

The Regent made a deprecatory gesture, and said softly, with a smile
which resembled that of a dead man:

"We are not alone."

"No one is here," said Ameni, "who can hear us; and what I say is known to
every child."

"But if it came to the king's ears--" whispered Ani, "he--"

"He would perceive how unwise it is to derogate from the ancient rights
of those on whom it is incumbent to prove the purity of blood of the
sovereign of this land. However, Rameses sits on the throne; may life
bloom for him, with health and strength!"--[A formula which even in
private letters constantly follows the name of the Pharaoh.]

The Regent bowed, and then asked:

"Do you propose to obey the demand of the Pharaoh without delay?"

"He is the king. Our council, which will meet in a few days, can only
determine how, and not whether we shall fulfil his command."

"You will retard the departure of the serfs, and Rameses requires them at
once. The bloody labor of the war demands new tools."

"And the peace will perhaps demand a new master, who understands how to
employ the sons of the land to its greatest advantage--a genuine son of
Ra."

The Regent stood opposite the high-priest, motionless as an image cast in
bronze, and remained silent; but Ameni lowered his staff before him as
before a god, and then went into the fore part of the hall.

When Ani followed him, a soft smile played as usual upon his countenance,
and full of dignity he took his seat on the throne.

"Art thou at an end of thy communications?" he asked the high-priest.

"It remains for me to inform you all," replied Ameni with a louder voice,
to be heard by all the assembled dignitaries, "that the princess
Bent-Anat yesterday morning committed a heavy sin, and that in all the
temples in the land the Gods shall be entreated with offerings to take
her uncleanness from her."

Again a shadow passed over the smile on the Regent's countenance. He
looked meditatively on the ground, and then said:

"To-morrow I will visit the House of Seti; till then I beg that this
affair may be left to rest."

Ameni bowed, and the Regent left the hall to withdraw to a wing of the
king's palace, in which he dwelt.

On his writing-table lay sealed papers. He knew that they contained
important news for him; but he loved to do violence to his curiosity, to
test his resolution, and like an epicure to reserve the best dish till
the last.

He now glanced first at some unimportant letters. A dumb negro, who
squatted at his feet, burned the papyrus rolls which his master gave him
in a brazier. A secretary made notes of the short facts which Ani called
out to him, and the ground work was laid of the answers to the different
letters.

At a sign from his master this functionary quitted the room, and Ani then
slowly opened a letter from the king, whose address: "To my brother Ani,"
showed that it contained, not public, but private information.

On these lines, as he well knew, hung his future life, and the road it
should follow.

With a smile, that was meant to conceal even from himself his deep inward
agitation, he broke the wax which sealed the short manuscript in the
royal hand.

"What relates to Egypt, and my concern for my country, and the happy
issue of the war," wrote the Pharaoh, "I have written to you by the hand
of my secretary; but these words are for the brother, who desires to be
my son, and I write to him myself. The lordly essence of the Divinity
which dwells in me, readily brings a quick 'Yes' or 'No' to my lips, and
it decides for the best. Now you demand my daughter Bent-Anat to wife,
and I should not be Rameses if I did not freely confess that before I had
read the last words of your letter, a vehement 'No' rushed to my lips. I
caused the stars to be consulted, and the entrails of the victims to be
examined, and they were adverse to your request; and yet I could not
refuse you, for you are dear to me, and your blood is royal as my own.
Even more royal, an old friend said, and warned me against your ambition
and your exaltation. Then my heart changed, for I were not Seti's son if
I allow myself to injure a friend through idle apprehensions; and he who
stands so high that men fear that he may try to rise above Rameses, seems
to me to be worthy of Bent-Anat. Woo her, and, should she consent freely,
the marriage may be celebrated on the day when I return home. You are
young enough to make a wife happy, and your mature wisdom will guard my
child from misfortune. Bent-Anat shall know that her father, and king,
encourages your suit; but pray too to the Hathors, that they may
influence Bent-Anat's heart in your favor, for to her decision we must
both submit."

The Regent had changed color several times while reading this letter. Now
he laid it on the table with a shrug of his shoulders, stood up, clasped
his hand behind him, and, with his eyes cast meditatively on the floor,
leaned against one of the pillars which supported the beams of the roof.

The longer he thought, the less amiable his expression became. "A pill
sweetened with honey,

[Two recipes for pills are found in the papyri, one with honey for
women, and one without for men.]

such as they give to women," he muttered to himself. Then he went back to
the table, read the king's letter through once more, and said: "One may
learn from it how to deny by granting, and at the same time not to forget
to give it a brilliant show of magnanimity. Rameses knows his daughter.
She is a girl like any other, and will take good care not to choose a man
twice as old as herself, and who might be her father. Rameses will
'submit'--I am to I submit!'  And to what? to the judgment and the choice
of a wilful child!"

With these words he threw the letter so vehemently on to the table, that
it slipped off on to the floor.

The mute slave picked it up, and laid it carefully on the table again,
while his master threw a ball into a silver bason.

Several attendants rushed into the room, and Ani ordered them to bring to
him the captive dwarf of the Lady Katuti. His soul rose in indignation
against the king, who in his remote camp-tent could fancy he had made him
happy by a proof of his highest favor. When we are plotting against a man
we are inclined to regard him as an enemy, and if he offers us a rose we
believe it to be for the sake, not of the perfume, but of the thorns.

The dwarf Nemu was brought before the Regent and threw himself on the
ground at his feet.

Ani ordered the attendants to leave him, and said to the little man

"You compelled me to put you in prison. Stand up!" The dwarf rose and
said, "Be thanked--for my arrest too."

The Regent looked at him in astonishment; but Nemu went on half humbly,
half in fun, "I feared for my life, but thou hast not only not shortened
it, but hast prolonged it; for in the solitude of the dungeon time seemed
long, and the minutes grown to hours."

"Keep your wit for the ladies," replied the Regent. "Did I not know that
you meant well, and acted in accordance with the Lady Katuti's fancy, I
would send you to the quarries."

"My hands," mumbled the dwarf, "could only break stones for a game of
draughts; but my tongue is like the water, which makes one peasant rich,
and carries away the fields of another."

"We shall know how to dam it up."

"For my lady and for thee it will always flow the right way," said the
dwarf. "I showed the complaining citizens who it is that slaughters their
flesh and blood, and from whom to look for peace and content. I poured
caustic into their wounds, and praised the physician."

"But unasked and recklessly," interrupted Ani; "otherwise you have shown
yourself capable, and I am willing to spare you for a future time. But
overbusy friends are more damaging than intelligent enemies. When I need
your services I will call for you. Till then avoid speech. Now go to your
mistress, and carry to Katuti this letter which has arrived for her."

"Hail to Ani, the son of the Sun!" cried the dwarf kissing the Regent's
foot. "Have I no letter to carry to my mistress Nefert?"

"Greet her from me," replied the Regent. "Tell Katuti I will visit her
after the next meal. The king's charioteer has not written, yet I hear
that he is well. Go now, and be silent and discreet."

The dwarf quitted the room, and Ani went into an airy hall, in which his
luxurious meal was laid out, consisting of many dishes prepared with
special care. His appetite was gone, but he tasted of every dish, and
gave the steward, who attended on him, his opinion of each.

Meanwhile he thought of the king's letter, of Bent-Anat, and whether it
would be advisable to expose himself to a rejection on her part.

After the meal he gave himself up to his body-servant, who carefully
shaved, painted, dressed, and decorated him, and then held the mirror
before him.

He considered the reflection with anxious observation, and when he seated
himself in his litter to be borne to the house of his friend Katuti, he
said to himself that he still might claim to be called a handsome man.

If he paid his court to Bent-Anat--if she listened to his suit--what
then?

He would refer it to Katuti, who always knew how to say a decisive word
when he, entangled in a hundred pros and cons, feared to venture on a
final step.

By her advice he had sought to wed the princess, as a fresh mark of
honor--as an addition to his revenues--as a pledge for his personal
safety. His heart had never been more or less attached to her than to any
other beautiful woman in Egypt. Now her proud and noble personality stood
before his inward eye, and he felt as if he must look up to it as to a
vision high out of his reach. It vexed him that he had followed Katuti's
advice, and he began to wish his suit had been repulsed. Marriage with
Bent-Anat seemed to him beset with difficulties. His mood was that of a
man who craves some brilliant position, though he knows that its
requirements are beyond his powers--that of an ambitious soul to whom
kingly honors are offered on condition that he will never remove a heavy
crown from his head. If indeed another plan should succeed, if--and his
eyes flashed eagerly--if fate set him on the seat of Rameses, then the
alliance with Bent-Anat would lose its terrors; there would he be her
absolute King and Lord and Master, and no one could require him to
account for what he might be to her, or vouchsafe to her.




CHAPTER X.

During the events we have described the house of the charioteer Mena had
not remained free from visitors.

It resembled the neighboring estate of Paaker, though the buildings were
less new, the gay paint on the pillars and walls was faded, and the large
garden lacked careful attention. In the vicinity of the house only, a few
well-kept beds blazed with splendid flowers, and the open colonnade,
which was occupied by Katuti and her daughter, was furnished with royal
magnificence.

The elegantly carved seats were made of ivory, the tables of ebony, and
they, as well as the couches, had gilt feet. The artistically worked
Syrian drinking vessels on the sideboard, tables, and consoles were of
many forms; beautiful vases full of flowers stood everywhere; rare
perfumes rose from alabaster cups, and the foot sank in the thick pile of
the carpets which covered the floor.

And over the apparently careless arrangement of these various objects
there reigned a peculiar charm, an indescribably fascinating something.

Stretched at full-length on a couch, and playing with a silky-haired
white cat, lay the fair Nefert--fanned to coolness by a negro-girl--while
her mother Katuti nodded a last farewell to her sister Setchem and to
Paaker.

Both had crossed this threshold for the first time for four years, that
is since the marriage of Mena with Nefert, and the old enmity seemed now
to have given way to heartfelt reconciliation and mutual understanding.

After the pioneer and his mother had disappeared behind the pomegranate
shrubs at the entrance of the garden, Katuti turned to her daughter and
said:

"Who would have thought it yesterday? I believe Paaker loves you still."

Nefert colored, and exclaimed softly, while she hit the kitten gently
with her fan--

"Mother!"

Katuti smiled.

She was a tall woman of noble demeanor, whose sharp but delicately-cut
features and sparkling eyes could still assert some pretensions to
feminine beauty. She wore a long robe, which reached below her ankles; it
was of costly material, but dark in color, and of a studied simplicity.
Instead of the ornaments in bracelets, anklets, ear and finger-rings, in
necklaces and clasps, which most of the Egyptian ladies--and indeed her
own sister and daughter--were accustomed to wear, she had only fresh
flowers, which were never wanting in the garden of her son-in-law. Only a
plain gold diadem, the badge of her royal descent, always rested, from
early morning till late at night, on her high brow--for a woman too high,
though nobly formed--and confined the long blue-black hair, which fell
unbraided down her back, as if its owner contemned the vain labor of
arranging it artistically. But nothing in her exterior was
unpremeditated, and the unbejewelled wearer of the diadem, in her plain
dress, and with her royal figure, was everywhere sure of being observed,
and of finding imitators of her dress, and indeed of her demeanor.

And yet Katuti had long lived in need; aye at the very hour when we first
make her acquaintance, she had little of her own, but lived on the estate
of her son-in-law as his guest, and as the administrator of his
possessions; and before the marriage of her daughter she had lived with
her children in a house belonging to her sister Setchem.

She had been the wife of her own brother,

[Marriages between brothers and sisters were allowed in ancient
Egypt. The Ptolemaic princes adopted this, which was contrary to
the Macedonian customs. When Ptolemy II. Philadelphus married his
sister Arsinoe, it seems to have been thought necessary to excuse it
by the relative positions of Venus and Saturn at that period, and
the constraining influences of these planets.]

who had died young, and who had squandered the greatest part of the
possessions which had been left to him by the new royal family, in an
extravagant love of display.

When she became a widow, she was received as a sister with her children
by her brother-in-law, Paaker's father. She lived in a house of her own,
enjoyed the income of an estate assigned to her by the old Mohar, and
left to her son-in-law the care of educating her son, a handsome and
overbearing lad, with all the claims and pretensions of a youth of
distinction.

Such great benefits would have oppressed and disgraced the proud Katuti,
if she had been content with them and in every way agreed with the giver.
But this was by no means the case; rather, she believed that she might
pretend to a more brilliant outward position, felt herself hurt when her
heedless son, while he attended school, was warned to work more
seriously, as he would by and by have to rely on his own skill and his
own strength. And it had wounded her when occasionally her brother-in-law
had suggested economy, and had reminded her, in his straightforward way,
of her narrow means, and the uncertain future of her children.

At this she was deeply offended, for she ventured to say that her
relatives could never, with all their gifts, compensate for the insults
they heaped upon her; and thus taught them by experience that we quarrel
with no one more readily than with the benefactor whom we can never repay
for all the good he bestows on us.

Nevertheless, when her brother-in-law asked the hand of her daughter for
his son, she willingly gave her consent.

Nefert and Paaker had grown up together, and by this union she foresaw
that she could secure her own future and that of her children.

Shortly after the death of the Mohar, the charioteer Mena had proposed
for Nefert's hand, but would have been refused if the king himself had
not supported the suit of his favorite officer. After the wedding, she
retired with Nefert to Mena's house, and undertook, while he was at the
war, to manage his great estates, which however had been greatly
burthened with debt by his father.

Fate put the means into her hands of indemnifying herself and her
children for many past privations, and she availed herself of them to
gratify her innate desire to be esteemed and admired; to obtain admission
for her son, splendidly equipped, into a company of chariot-warriors of
the highest class; and to surround her daughter with princely
magnificence.

When the Regent, who had been a friend of her late husband, removed into
the palace of the Pharaohs, he made her advances, and the clever and
decided woman knew how to make herself at first agreeable, and finally
indispensable, to the vacillating man.

She availed herself of the circumstance that she, as well as he, was
descended from the old royal house to pique his ambition, and to open to
him a view, which even to think of, he would have considered forbidden as
a crime, before he became intimate with her.

Ani's suit for the hand of the princess Bent-Anat was Katuti's work. She
hoped that the Pharoah would refuse, and personally offend the Regent,
and so make him more inclined to tread the dangerous road which she was
endeavoring to smooth for him. The dwarf Nemu was her pliant tool.

She had not initiated him into her projects by any words; he however gave
utterance to every impulse of her mind in free language, which was
punished only with blows from a fan, and, only the day before, had been
so audacious as to say that if the Pharoah were called Ani instead of
Rameses, Katuti would be not a queen but a goddess for she would then
have not to obey, but rather to guide, the Pharaoh, who indeed himself
was related to the Immortals.

Katuti did not observe her daughter's blush, for she was looking
anxiously out at the garden gate, and said:

"Where can Nemu be! There must be some news arrived for us from the
army."

"Mena has not written for so long," Nefert said softly. "Ah! here is the
steward!"

Katuti turned to the officer, who had entered the veranda through a side
door:

"What do you bring," she asked.