I have not yet described this monarch to you. When I arrived and presented your letters, he received me with marked courtesy; inquired after your welfare and the prosperity of your reign; asked your age, and when I told him you were seventy-three, he said he knew of no king so aged, unless it was Jethro, king of Midian. He inquired why I had delayed coming to Egypt until I was forty-two (for I told him my age, which exactly corresponds with his own); and when I informed him that I had been engaged in improving and restoring my kingdom of Damascus, which I inherited from my mother, and which the Sabæans had thrice invaded and devastated before I came of age, he expressed his pleasure that peace was restored, and that I had come into Egypt, at last. He seems naturally superstitious, credulous, and irresolute. I think he possesses little or no stability of character, and that he is easily influenced to do evil. He is timid in his policy, yet rash; vain of his wisdom, yet constantly guilty of follies; a devout worshipper of his gods, yet a slave to the basest personal vices; jealous of his rights, yet, from want of courage, suffering them continually to be invaded, both by his subjects and tributary princes; a man whose word is kept, only so far as his present interest demands; who will pardon to-night a suppliant, from irresolution and morbid pity, and execute him in the morning when the coldness of his nature returns. Were he my friend, I should distrust him; were he my foe, I would not delay to place the sea between me and his sword. Under such a prince, you may imagine that the condition of the Hebrew people is not less pitiable than under his predecessors. Fearing them, he doubles their tasks, and resorts to every device of destruction, short of open and indiscriminate slaughter. Yet even this infernal idea has been suggested by him to his private council; but it was opposed, on the ground that the burial of so many millions would be impossible, and that a plague would result fatal to the population of Egypt.