"Your Majesty,--I write from my pavilion pitched at the foot of the Libyan mountains. I need not forewarn you of the subject of this letter, when I assure you that within the hour I have received intelligence from Memphis, that you are about to abdicate your throne in favor of Remeses, your suppositious son. This intelligence does not surprise me. When I was in Lower Egypt, I saw through you and your policy. I perceived that while you feared me, you resolved to defeat my power over you. This purpose, to surrender the sceptre of the two Egypts, I can penetrate. You design, thereby, securely to place Remeses beyond my power to harm him, for that, being king, if I lift a finger he can destroy me. I admire your policy, and bow in homage to your diplomacy. But, O queen, both you and Remeses are in my power! Nay, do not flash your imperial eyes at this assertion. Hear me for a few moments. "Your ready compliance with my demand, a few years ago, to create me viceroy of Thebes, led me to believe that my suspicions were true; that is, that Remeses was the son of one of your noble ladies, whom you had adopted. And when you made me admiral of your fleet, on my second demand, I was convinced that you feared the truth, and that it might be proven, with proper evidence, that Remeses was not your son. I set to work to obtain this evidence. You know that I have something of the sleuth-hound in my composition, and that once upon a track I will follow it to its termination, were it under the pyramid of Noachis itself. I employed emissaries. I bribed even your own courtiers. I ascertained who were of your court when your husband was killed in Ethiopia, thirty-five years ago. Three old lords and ladies still live, and have good memories when gold, and jewels, and promises of place dazzle their humid eyes. From them I learned, that about the time of the supposed birth of Remeses, you sent away, in one day, five of your ladies and maids of honor, to a distant country: yet not so quickly but that one of them dropped the secret, that you were not a real mother, and that the infant you called your own was the son of another woman. This secret was told to her brother who, in after years, was my master of horse. When, on one occasion, I was about to put him to death for cowardice in battle, he informed me that he held a great secret 'concerning the queen, Prince Remeses, and myself,' and that if I would pardon and restore him to his rank, he would divulge it, saying, that for fear it would be traced to him by your majesty if he ever spoke of it, he had never made it known to any man.