Seeing the walls of the cell and its poverty, he recalled the years of his boyhood passed at a priests' school. How many blows of sticks he had received there, how many nights he had passed on a stone floor as punishment! Even then Rameses felt the hatred and fear which he had felt before toward that harsh priest who to all his prayers and questions answered only with, "Think of eternity." After some months of uproar to drop into such silence, to exchange the court of a prince for obscurity and loneliness, and instead of feasts, women, and music, to feel around and above him the weight of walls! "I have gone mad! I have gone mad!" muttered Rameses. There was a moment when he wished to leave the temple at once; but afterward he thought that they might not open the gate to him. The sight of his dirty legs, of the ashes falling out of his hair, the roughness of his penitential rags, all this disgusted him. If he had had his sword even! But would he, dressed as he was in that place, dare to use it? He felt an overpowering dread, and that sobered him. He remembered that the gods in temples send down fear on men, and that this fear must be the beginning of wisdom. "Moreover, I am the viceroy and the heir of the pharaoh," thought he; "who will harm me in this temple?" He rose and went out of the cell. He found himself in a broad court surrounded by columns. The stars were shining brightly; hence he saw at one end of the court an immense pylon, at the other an open entrance to the temple. He went thither. At the door there was gloom, and somewhere far off flamed a number of lamps, as if in the air and unsupported. Looking more attentively, he saw standing closely together between the entrance and the lamps a forest of columns, the tops of which were lost in darkness. At a distance, perhaps two hundred yards from him, he saw indistinctly the gigantic legs of a sitting goddess with her hands resting on her knees, from which the lamplight was reflected dimly. All at once he heard a sound from afar. From a side passage a row of white figures pushed forth, moving in couples. This was a night procession of priests, who, singing in two choruses, gave homage to the statue of the goddess: _Chorus I._ "I am He who created heaven and earth and made all things contained in them." _Chorus II._ "I am He who created the waters and the great overflow, He who made for the bull his mother whose parent he himself is." _Chorus I._ "I am He who made heaven and the secrets of its horizon; as to the gods I it was who placed their souls in them." _Chorus II._ "I am He who when he opens his eyes there is light in the world and when he closes them darkness is present." _Chorus I._ "The waters of the Nile flow when he commands." _Chorus II._ "But the gods do not know what his name is."[9] [9] Authentic.