"Your Majesty,--I address my letter to you from this petty castle, though, albeit, the stronghold of your kingdom seaward, over which you have made me governor. For a subject, this would be a post of honor. For me, the son of your husband's brother, your royal nephew, it is but an honorable exile from a court where you fear my presence. Honorable, do I say?--rather, dishonorable; for am I not a prince of the blood of the Pharaohs? But let this pass, your majesty. I do not insist upon any thing based upon mere lineage. _I feel that I was aggrieved by the birth of Remeses._ I see that you turn pale. Do not do so yet. You must read further before the blood wholly leaves your cheek. I repeat, I am aggrieved by the 'birth of Remeses.' You see I quote the last three words. Ere you close this letter, your majesty will know why I mark them _thus_. Your husband, the vicegerent of the Thisitic kingdom of the South, after leaving his capital, Thebes, at the head of a great army, died like a soldier descended from a line of a thousand warrior kings, in combat with the Ethiopian. I was then, for your majesty was without offspring, the heir to the throne of Egypt. I was the son of your husband's younger brother. Though but three years old when your lord was slain, I had learned the lesson that I was to be king of Egypt, when I became a man. But to the surprise of all men, of your council of priests, and your cabinet of statesmen, lo! you soon afterwards became a mother, when no evidences of this promise had been apparent! Nay, do not cast down this letter, O queen! Read it to the end! It is important you should know all. "When I became of lawful maturity, it was whispered to me by a certain person, that there were suspicions that the queen had feigned maternity, and that she had adopted an infant of the wife of one of her lords, in order to prevent the son of her husband's brother from inheriting. It is true, your majesty, that my father, your lord's brother, loved you, as a maiden, and would have borne you from the palace of Pharaoh, your father, as his own. Yet why should your revenge extend to his son, after he married another princess? Why did you deceive Egypt, and supplant his son (myself), by imposing upon Egypt the infant Remeses, the child of a lord of your palace, whom no one knows, for you took care to send him, with an ample bribe of gold, to Carthage, or some other distant country. Now, your majesty knows whether this be true or not. I believe it to be so, and that the haughty, hypocritically meek Remeses, has no more right to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter than one of the children of the base Hebrews, or of an Egyptian swine-herd; and, by the gods, judging from his features, he might be a Ben Israel!