"To-morrow morning after the military council." "What are the queens doing?" "The first queen is praying in the chamber of her dead son, and thy worthy mother is receiving the Phœnician ambassador, who has brought her gifts from the women of Tyre." "Did he bring maidens?" "A number of them. Each has on her person treasures to the value of ten talents." "Who is moving about down there with torches?" asked the prince, pointing to the lower park. "They are taking thy brother, worthiness, from a tree where he has been sitting since midday." "Is he unwilling to come down?" "He will come down now, for the first queen's jester has gone for him, and has promised to take him to the inn where dissectors are drinking." "And hast thou heard anything of the manœuvres of to-day?" "They say that the staff was cut off from the corps." "And what more?" The official hesitated. "Tell what thou hast heard." "We heard, moreover, that because of this five hundred blows of a stick were given to a certain officer at thy command, worthiness." "It is all a lie!" said one of the adjutants of the heir in an undertone. "The soldiers, too, say among themselves that it must be a lie," returned the official, with growing confidence. Rameses turned his horse and rode to the lower part of the park where his small palace was situated. It had a ground and an upper story and was built of wood. Its form was that of an immense hexagon with two porticos, an upper and a lower one which surrounded the building and rested on a multitude of pillars. Lamps were burning in the interior; hence it was possible to see that the walls were formed of planks perforated like lace, and that these walls were protected from the wind by curtains of various colors. The roof of the building was flat, surrounded by a balustrade; on this roof stood a number of tents. Greeted heartily by half-naked servitors, some of whom ran out with torches, while others prostrated themselves before him, the heir entered his residence. On the ground floor he removed his dusty dress, bathed in a stone basin, and put on a kind of great sheet which he fastened at the neck and bound round his waist with a cord for a girdle. On the first floor he ate a supper consisting of a wheaten cake, dates, and a glass of light beer. Then he went to the terrace of the building, and lying on a couch covered with a lion skin, commanded the servants to withdraw and to bring up Tutmosis the moment he appeared there. About midnight a litter stopped before the residence, and out of it stepped the adjutant. When he walked along the terrace heavily yawning as he went, the prince sprang up from the couch and cried,-- "Art thou here? Well, what?" "Then art thou not sleeping yet?" replied Tutmosis. "O gods, after so many days of torture! I think that I should sleep until sunrise." "What of Sarah?" "She will be here the day after to-morrow, or thou wilt be with her in the house beyond the river." "Only after to-morrow!"