CHAPTER XII
Rameses passed most of the night in feverish imaginings. Once thevision of the state appeared to him as an immense labyrinth withstrong walls through which no one could force a way, then again he sawthe shadow of a priest who with one wise opinion had indicated to himthe method of escape from that labyrinth. And now appearedunexpectedly before him two powers,--the interest of the state, whichhe had not felt thus far, though he was heir to the throne; and thepriesthood, which he wished to debase and then make his servant.
That was a burdensome night. The prince turned on his bed repeatedly,and asked himself whether he had not been blind, and if he had notreceived sight that day for the first time in order to convincehimself of his folly and nothingness. How differently during thosenight hours did the warnings of his mother appear to him, and therestraint of his father in enouncing the supreme will, and even thestern conduct of the minister, Herhor.
"The state and the priesthood!" repeated the prince, half asleep, andcovered with cold perspiration.
The heavenly deities alone know what would have happened had therebeen time to develop and ripen those thoughts which were circling thatnight in the soul of Rameses. Perhaps if he had become pharaoh hewould have been one of the most fortunate and longest-lived rulers.Perhaps his name, carved in temples above ground and underground,would have come down to posterity surrounded with the highest glory.Perhaps he and his dynasty would not have lost the throne, and Egyptwould have avoided great disturbance and the bitterest days of herhistory.
But the serenity of morning scattered the visions which circled abovethe heated head of the heir, and the succeeding days changed greatlyhis ideas of the inflexible interests of Egypt.
The visit of the prince to the prison was not fruitless. Theinvestigating official made a report to the supreme judge immediately,the judge looked over the case again, examined some of the accusedhimself, and in the course of some days liberated the greater number;the remainder he brought to trial as quickly as possible.
When he who had complained of the damage done the prince's propertydid not appear, though summoned in the hall of the court and on themarket-place, the case was dropped, and the rest of the accused wereset at liberty.
One of the judges remarked, it is true, that according to law theprince's overseer should be prosecuted for false complaint, and, incase of conviction, suffer the punishment which threatened thedefendants. This question too they passed over in silence.
The overseer disappeared from the eyes of justice, he was sent by theheir to the province of Takens, and soon the whole box of documents inthe case vanished it was unknown whither.
On hearing this, Prince Rameses went to the grand secretary and askedwith a smile,--
"Well, worthy lord, the innocent are liberated, the documentsconcerning them have been destroyed sacrilegiously, and still thedignity of the government has not been exposed to danger."
"My prince," answered the grand secretary, with his usual coolness, "Idid not understand that thou offerest complaints with one hand andwishest to withdraw them with the other. Worthiness, thou wertoffended by the rabble; hence it was thy affair to punish it. If thouhast forgiven it, the state has nothing to answer."
"The state!--the state!" repeated the prince. "We are the state,"added he, blinking.
"Yes, the state is the pharaoh and--his most faithful servants," addedthe secretary.
This conversation with such a high official sufficed to obliterate inthe prince's soul those ideas of state dignity which were growing andpowerful, though indistinct yet. "The state, then, is not thatimmovable, ancient edifice to which each pharaoh is bound to add onestone of glory, but rather a sand-heap, which each ruler reshapes ashe pleases. In the state there are no narrow doors, known as laws, inpassing through which each must bow his head, whoever he be, erpatr orearth-worker. In this edifice are various entrances and exits, narrowfor the weak and small, very wide, nay, commodious for the powerful."
"If this be so," thought the prince, as the idea flashed on him, "Iwill make the order which shall please me."
At that moment Rameses remembered two people,--the liberated black whowithout waiting for command had been ready to die for him, and thatunknown priest.
"If I had more like them, my will would have meaning in Egypt andbeyond it," said he to himself, and he felt an inextinguishable desireto find that priest.
"He is, in all likelihood, the man who restrained the crowd fromattacking my house. On the one hand he knows law to perfection, on theother he knows how to manage multitudes."
"A man beyond price! I must have him."
From that time Rameses, in a small boat managed by one oarsman, beganto visit the cottages in the neighborhood of his villa. Dressed in atunic and a great wig, in his hand a staff on which a measure was cutout, the prince looked like an engineer studying the Nile and itsoverflows.
Earth-tillers gave him willingly all explanations concerning changesin the form of land because of inundations, and at the same time theybegged that the government might think out some easier way of raisingwater than by sweeps and buckets. They told too of the attack on thehouse of Prince Rameses, and said that they knew not who threw thestones. Finally they mentioned the priest who had sent the crowd awayso successfully; but who he was they knew not.
"There is," said one man, "a priest in our neighborhood who cures soreeyes; there is one who heals wounds and sets broken arms and legs.There are some priests who teach reading and writing; there is one whoplays on a double flute, and plays even beautifully. But that one whowas in the garden of the heir is not among them, and they know nothingof him. Surely he must be the god Num, or some spirit watching overthe prince,--may he live through eternity and always have appetite!"
"Maybe it is really some spirit," thought Rameses.
In Egypt good or evil spirits always came more easily than rain.
The water of the Nile from being ruddy became brownish, and in August,the month of Hator, it reached one half its height. The sluices wereopened on the banks of the river, and the water began to fill thecanals quickly, and also the gigantic artificial lake, Moeris, in theprovince Fayum, celebrated for the beauty of its roses. Lower Egyptlooked like an arm of the sea thickly dotted with hills on which werehouses and gardens. Communication by land ceased altogether, and sucha multitude of boats circled around on the water--boats white, yellow,red, dark--that they seemed like leaves in autumn. On the highestpoints of land people had finished harvesting the peculiar cotton ofthe country, and for the second time had cut clover and begun togather in olives and tamarinds.
On a certain day, while sailing along over inundated lands, theprince saw an unusual movement. On one of the temporary mounds washeard among the trees the loud cry of a woman.
"Surely some one is dead," thought Rameses.
From a second mound were sailing away in small boats supplies of wheatand some cattle, while people standing at buildings on the landthreatened and abused people in the boats.
"Some quarrel among neighbors," said the prince to himself.
In remoter places there was quiet, and people instead of working orsinging were sitting on the ground in silence.
"They must have finished work and are resting."
But from a third mound a boat moved away with a number of cryingchildren, while a woman wading in the water to her waist shook herfist and threatened.
"They are taking children to school," thought Rameses.
These happenings began to interest him.
On a fourth mound he heard a fresh cry. He shaded his eyes and saw aman lying on the ground; a negro was beating him.
"What is happening there?" asked Rameses of the boatman.
"Does not my lord see that they are beating a wretched earth-tiller?"answered the boatman, smiling. "He must have done something, so painis travelling through his bones."
"But who art thou?"
"I?" replied the boatman, proudly. "I am a free fisherman. If I give acertain share of my ca
tch to his holiness, I may sail the Nile fromthe sea to the cataract. A fisherman is like a fish or a wild goose;but an earth-tiller is like a tree which nourishes lords with itsfruit and can never escape but only squeaks when overseers spoil thebark on it."
"Oho! ho! but look there!" cried the fisherman, pleased again. "Hei!father, don't drink up all the water, or there will be a bad harvest."
This humorous exclamation referred to a group of persons who weredisplaying a very original activity. A number of naked laborers wereholding a man by the legs and plunging him head first in the water tohis neck, to his breast, and at last to his waist. Near them stood anoverseer with a cane; he wore a stained tunic and a wig made ofsheepskin.
A little farther on some men held a woman by the arms, while shescreamed in a voice which was heaven-piercing.
Beating with a stick was as general in the happy kingdom of thepharaoh as eating and sleeping. They beat children and grown people,earth-tillers, artisans, warriors, officers, and officials. All livingpersons were caned save only priests and the highest officials--therewas no one to cane them. Hence the prince looked calmly enough on anearth-worker beaten with a cane; but to plunge a man into water rousedhis attention.
"Ho! ho!" laughed the boatman, meanwhile, "but are they giving himdrink! He will grow so thick that his wife must lengthen his belt forhim."
The prince commanded to row to the mound. Meanwhile they had taken theman from the river, let him cough out water, and seized him a secondtime by the legs, in spite of the unearthly screams of his wife, whofell to biting the men who had seized her.
"Stop!" cried Rameses to those who were dragging the earth-tiller.
"Do your duty!" cried he of the sheepskin wig, in nasal tones. "Whoart thou, insolent, who darest--"
At that moment the prince gave him a blow on the forehead with hiscane, which luckily was light. Still the owner of the stained tunicdropped to the earth, and feeling his wig and head, looked with mistyeyes at the attacker.
"I divine," said he in a natural voice, "that I have the honor toconverse with a notable person. May good humor always accompany thee,lord, and bile never spread through thy bones--"
"What art thou doing to this man?" interrupted Rameses.
"Thou inquirest," returned the man, speaking again in nasal tones,"like a foreigner unacquainted with the customs of the country and thepeople, to whom he speaks too freely. Know, then, that I am thecollector of his worthiness Dagon, the first banker in Memphis. And ifthou hast not grown pale yet, know that the worthy Dagon is the agentand the friend of the erpatr,--may he live through eternity!--and thatthou hast committed violence on the lands of Prince Rameses; to thismy people will testify."
"Then know this," interrupted the prince; but he stopped suddenly."By what right art thou torturing in this way one of the prince'searth-tillers?"
"Because he will not pay his rent, and the treasury of the heir is inneed of it."
The servants of the official, in view of the catastrophe which hadcome on their master, dropped their victim and stood as helpless asthe members of a body from which its head has been severed. Theliberated man began to spit again and shake the water out of his ears,but his wife rushed up to the rescuer.
"Whoever thou art," groaned she, clasping her hands before Rameses, "agod, or even a messenger of the pharaoh, listen to the tale of oursufferings. We are earth-tillers of the heir to the throne,--may helive through eternity!--and we have paid all our dues: in millet, inwheat, in flowers, and in skins of cattle. But in the last ten daysthis man here has come and commands us again to give seven measures ofwheat to him. 'By what right?' asks my husband; 'the rents are paid,all of them.' But he throws my husband on the ground, stamps, andsays, 'By this right, that the worthy Dagon has commanded.' 'Whenceshall I get wheat,' asks my husband, 'when we have none and for amonth past we have eaten only seeds, or roots of lotus, which areharder and harder to get, for great lords like to amuse themselveswith flowers of the lotus?'"
She lost breath and fell to weeping. The prince waited patiently tillshe calmed herself, but the man who had been plunged into the watergrumbled.
"This woman will bring misfortune with her talk. I have said that I donot like to see women meddle."
Meanwhile the official, pushing up to the boatman, asked in anundertone, indicating Rameses,--
"Who is this?"
"Ah, may thy tongue wither!" answered the boatman. "Dost thou not seethat he must be a great lord: he pays well and strikes heavily."
"I saw at once," answered the official, "that he must be some greatperson. My youth passed at feasts with noted persons."
"Aha! the sauces have stuck to thy dress after those feasts," blurtedout the boatman.
The woman, after crying, continued,--
"To-day this scribe came with his people, and said to my husband, 'Ifthou hast not money, give thy two sons. The worthy Dagon will not onlyforgive thee the rent, but will pay thee a drachma a year for eachboy.'"
"Woe to me because of thee!" roared the half-drowned husband; "thouwilt destroy us all with thy babbling. Do not listen to her,"continued he, turning to Rameses. "As a cow thinks that she frightensoff flies with her tail, so it seems to a woman that she can driveaway collectors with her tongue; and neither cow nor woman knows thatshe is stupid."
"Thou art stupid!" said the woman. "Sunlike lord with the form of apharaoh--"
"I call to witness that this woman blasphemes," said the official tohis people in a low voice.
"Odorous flower, whose voice is like a flute, listen to me!" imploredthe woman of Rameses. "Then my husband answered this official, 'Iwould rather lose two bulls, if I had them, than give my boys away,though thou wert to give me four drachmas; for when a boy leaves homefor service no one ever sees him after that.'"
"Would that I were choked! would that fish were eating my body in thebottom of the Nile!" groaned the earth-tiller. "Thou wilt destroy allour house with thy complaints, woman."
The official, seeing that he had the support of the side mainlyinterested, stepped forth and began, in nasal tones, a second time,--
"Since the sun rises beyond the palace of the pharaoh and sets overthe pyramids, various wonders have happened in this country. In thedays of the Pharaoh Sememphes marvellous things appeared near thepyramid of Kochom, and a plague fell on Egypt. In the time of Boetusthe ground opened near Bubastis and swallowed many people. In thereign of Neferches the waters of the Nile for eleven days were assweet as honey. Men saw these and many other things of which I know,for I am full of wisdom. But never has it been seen that some unknownman came up out of the water and stopped the collection of rent in thelands of the heir to the throne of Egypt."
"Be silent," shouted Rameses, "and be off out of this place! No onewill take thy children," said he to the woman.
"It is easy for me to go away," said the collector, "for I have aswift boat and five rowers. But, worthiness, give me some sign for mylord Dagon."
"Take off thy wig and show him the sign on thy forehead," saidRameses. "And tell Dagon that I will put marks of the same kind allover his body."
"Listen to that blasphemy!" whispered the collector to his men,drawing back toward the bank with low bows.
He sat down in the boat, and when his assistants had moved off andpushed away some tens of yards, he stretched out his hand andshouted,--
"May gripe seize thy intestines, blasphemer, rebel! From here I willgo straight to Prince Rameses and tell him what is happening on hislands."
Then he took his cane and belabored his men because they had not takenpart with him.
"So it will be with thee!" cried he to Rameses.
The prince sprang into his boat and in a rage commanded the boatman topursue the insolent servant of the usurer. But he of the sheepskin wigthrew down the cane, took an oar himself, and his men helped him sowell that pursuit became impossible.
"Sooner could an owl overtake a lark than we overtake them, mybeautiful lord," cried the prince's boatman, laughing. "But
who artthou? Thou art not a surveyor, but an officer, maybe even an officerof the guard of his holiness. Thou dost strike right always on theforehead! I know about this; I was five years in the army. I alwaysstruck on the forehead or the belly, and I had not the worst time inthe world. But if any one struck me, I understood right away that hemust be a great person. In our Egypt--may the gods never leave theland!--it is terribly crowded; town is near town, house is near house,man is near man. Whoso wishes to turn in this throng must strike inthe forehead."
"Art thou married?" asked the prince.
"Pfu! when I have a woman and place for a person and a half, I ammarried; but for the rest of the time I am single. I have been in thearmy, and I know that a woman is good, though not at all times. She isin the way often."
"Perhaps thou wouldst come to me for service? Who knows, wouldst thoube sorry to work for me?"
"With permission, worthiness, I noticed that thou couldst lead aregiment in spite of thy young face. But I enter the service of noman. I am a free fisherman; my grandfather was, with permission, ashepherd in Lower Egypt, our family comes of the Hyksos people. It istrue that dull Egyptian earth-tillers revile us, but I laugh at them.The earth-tillers and the Hyksos, I say, worthiness, are like an oxand a bull. The earth-tiller may go behind the plough or before it,but the Hyksos will not serve any man, unless in the army of hisholiness,--that is warrior life."
The boatman was in the vein and talked continually, but the princeheard no longer. In his soul very painful questions grew louder andlouder, for they were new altogether. Were those mounds, then, aroundwhich he had been sailing, on his property? A marvellous thing, heknew not at all where his lands were nor what they looked like. So inhis name Dagon had imposed new rents on the people, and the activemovement on which he had been looking while moving along the shoreswas the extortion of rents. It was clear that the man whom they hadbeen beating on the shore had nothing to pay with. The children whowere crying bitterly in the boat were sold at a drachma per head for atwelvemonth, and that woman who was wading in the water to her waistand weeping was their mother.
"Women are very unquiet," said the prince to himself. "Sarah is thequietest woman; but others love to talk much, to cry and raise anuproar."
He remembered the man who was pacifying his wife's excitement. Theyhad been plunging him into the water and he was not angry; they didnothing to her, and still she made an uproar.
"Women are very unquiet!" repeated he. "Yes, even my mother, who isworthy of honor. What a difference between her and my father! Hisholiness does not wish to know at all that I left the army for a girl,but the queen likes to occupy herself even with this, that I took intomy house a Jewess. Sarah is the quietest of women whom I know; butTafet cries and makes an uproar for four persons."
Then the prince recalled the words of the man's wife,--that for amonth they had not eaten wheat, only seeds and roots of lotus. Lotusand poppy seeds are similar; the roots are poor. He could not eat themfor three days in succession. Moreover, the priests who were occupiedin medicine advised change of diet. While in school they told him thata man ought to eat flesh with fish, dates with wheat bread, figs withbarley. But for a whole month to live on lotus seeds! Well, cows andhorses? Cows and horses like hay, but barley straw must be shoved intotheir throats by force. Surely then earth-workers prefer lotus seedsas food, while wheat or barley cakes, fish and flesh they do notrelish. For that matter, the most pious priests, wonder-workers, nevertouch flesh or fish. Evidently magnates and king's sons need flesh,just as lions and eagles do; but earth-tillers grass, like an ox.
"Only that plunging into the water to pay rent. Ei! but didn't he oncein bathing with his comrades put them under water, and even divehimself? What laughing they had in those days! Diving was fun. And asto beating with a cane, how many times had they beaten him in school?It is painful, but evidently not for every creature. A beaten doghowls and bites; a beaten ox does not even look around. So beating maypain a great lord, but a common man cries only so as to cry when thechance comes. Not all cry; soldiers and officers sing whilebelabored."
But these wise reflections could not drown the small but annoyingdisquiet in the heart of Rameses. So his tenant Dagon had imposed anunjust rent which the tenants could not pay!
At this moment the prince was not concerned about the tenants, but hismother. His mother must know of this Phoenician management. What wouldshe say about it to her son? How she would look at him! How sneeringlyshe would laugh! And she would not be a woman if she did not speak tohim as follows: "I told thee, Rameses, that Phoenicians woulddesolate thy property."
"If those traitorous priests," thought the prince, "would give metwenty talents to-day, I would drive out that Dagon in the morning, mytenants would not be plunged under water, would not suffer blows, andmy mother would not jeer at me. A tenth, a hundredth part of thatwealth which is lying in the temples and feeding the greedy eyes ofthose bare heads would make me independent for years of Phoenicians."
Just then an idea which was strange enough flashed up in the soul ofRameses,--that between priests and earth-tillers there existed acertain opposition.
"Through Herhor," thought he, "that man hanged himself on the edge ofthe desert. To maintain priests and temples about two million Egyptianmen toil grievously. If the property of the priests belonged to thepharaoh's treasury, I should not have to borrow fifteen talents and mypeople would not be oppressed so terribly. There is the source ofmisfortunes for Egypt and of weakness for its pharaohs!"
The prince felt that a wrong was done the people; therefore heexperienced no small solace in discovering that priests were theauthors of this evil. It did not occur to him that his judgment mightbe unjust and faulty. Besides, he did not judge, he was onlyindignant. The anger of a man never turns against himself,--just as ahungry panther never eats its own body; it twirls its tail and movesits ears while looking for a victim.