"How should I do otherwise if among petitioners there are some who have suffered without cause, or if there is unrewarded service? Of course the foundation of the state is justice." "How many canst thou hear in a day without weariness?" asked Herhor. "Well, twenty." "Thou art happy. I hear at the most six or ten, but they are not interested in the petitions,--they are chief secretaries, overseers, and ministers. These men report to me no details, only the most important things that are done in the army, on the estates of the pharaoh, in questions of religion, in the courts, in the provinces, and touching movements of the Nile. Therefore they report no trivial matter, because each man before he comes to me must hear ten inferior secretaries. Each inferior secretary and overseer collected information from ten sub-secretaries and sub-inspectors, and they in their turn have heard reports from ten officials who are under them. In this manner I and his holiness speaking with only ten people daily know all that is most important in a hundred thousand points of Egypt and the world beyond it. "The watchman in charge of one part of a street in Memphis sees only a few houses. A decurion of ten policemen knows the whole street, a centurion a division of the city, the chief knows all the city. The pharaoh stands above them all, as if he were standing on the highest pylon of the temple of Ptah, and sees not only Memphis, but the cities, Sochem, On, Cherau, Turra, Tetani, with their suburbs, and a portion of the western desert. [Illustration: Step Pyramid] "From that height his holiness is unable, it is true, to see the people who are wronged, or those who are unrewarded, but he is able to see the crowd of laborers who have collected without work. He cannot see warriors in the dramshops, but he can know what regiment is exercising. He cannot see what a given earth-tiller or citizen is preparing for dinner, but he can see a fire beginning in a given quarter of the city. "This order in the state," continued Herhor, with growing animation, "is our strength and glory. Snofru, a pharaoh of the first dynasty, asked a certain priest what monument he should rear to himself. "'Draw on the earth, O lord,' replied the priest, 'a square, and put on it six million unhewn stones; they will represent the people. On that foundation place sixty thousand hewn stones; they will be the lower officials. On them place six thousand polished stones; they will be thy higher officials. On these put sixty covered with carvings; those will be thy most intimate counsellors and chief leaders, and on the summit place one monolith with its pedestal and the golden image of the sun; that will be thyself.'