Upon hearing this good news, dear father, I rejoiced, in anticipation, at the pleasure you would receive, when you should read my letter containing the pleasing tidings. I now asked the good Midianite when he would return. He said that in seven days he should depart, and that it would take him eleven days to reach that part of the country where Moses dwelt. Upon this, my dear father, after making sundry other inquiries about the route, I determined to accompany him; for I knew you would value one letter from me, saying I had seen and spoken with your friend face to face, more highly than many from the hundred-gated Thebes. I shall be gone but one month, and shall be well repaid, not only by seeing Moses, whose noble countenance I can just recollect as a pleasant remembrance of my childhood, but by conferring upon him the unexpected pleasure of hearing from you by your son, his namesake. Thus, for your sake, as well as for his, and also my own gratification in seeing a new and rarely visited country, I take my departure with the caravan. After I reach Midian, and have seen your old friend in the land of his long exile, I will write to you fully of all that may interest you. May the God of Abraham and of Moses have you always in His sacred keeping. Your loving son, REMESES OF DAMASCUS. LETTER III. MOSES TO SESOSTRIS. LAND OF MIDIAN. MY VENERABLE AND BELOVED KING AND FRIEND: With what emotions of joy and gratitude I embraced your princely son, Remeses, I can feebly express! I give God thanks for this happiness, vouchsafed to me in my eighty-first year, of hearing from you again, and by the mouth of your son. I rejoice to hear of your welfare, and prosperous reign. The sight of the young Remeses revives all the past, and in his face I see, with delight, your features and smile. I also perceive that he possesses all your virtues, and, above all, that you have taught him the knowledge of the true God. His presence here, and his readiness to come across the desert to see me, gratifies me. It assures me that I am loved by you both! Although, my friend, I have not written to you--for, since my flight from Egypt, my life has been wholly without events--yet, from time to time, by foreign merchants who have been in Tyre, I have had news of you, and of your prosperity. Until I beheld your son, I believed that I was quite forgotten!