The chariot entered the avenue of sphinxes, at the end of which rose a giant pylon crowned with a cornice on which the symbolic globe displayed its wings; the lessening darkness allowed the priest's daughter to recognise the King's palace. Then despair filled her heart; she struggled, she strove to free herself from the embrace which held her close; she pressed her frail hands against the stony breast of the Pharaoh, stiffened out her arms, throwing herself back over the edge of the chariot. Her efforts were useless, her struggles were vain. Her ravisher brought her back to his breast with an irresistible, slow pressure, as if he would have driven her into it. She tried to scream; her lips were closed with a kiss. Meanwhile the horses in three or four strides reached the pylon, under which they passed at full gallop, glad to return to the stable, and the chariot rolled into the vast court. The servants hastened up and sprang to the heads of the horses, whose bits were white with foam. Tahoser cast a terrified glance around her. High brick walls formed a vast square enclosure in which rose on the east a palace, on the west a temple, between two great pools, the piscinae of the sacred crocodiles. The first rays of the sun, the orb of which was already rising behind the Arabian mountains, flushed with rosy light the top of the buildings, the lower portions of which were still plunged in bluish shadows. There was no hope of flight. The buildings, though in no wise gloomy, had a look of irresistible strength, of absolute will, of eternal persistence: a world catastrophe alone could have opened an issue through these thick walls, through these piles of hard sandstone. To overthrow the pylons built of fragments of mountains, the earth itself would have had to quake; even a conflagration could only have licked with its fiery tongues those indestructible blocks. Poor Tahoser did not have at her command such violent means, and she was compelled to allow herself to be carried like a child by the Pharaoh, who had sprung from his chariot. Four high columns with palm-leaf capitals formed the propylaeum of the palace into which the king entered, still pressing to his breast the daughter of Petamounoph. When he had passed through the door, he gently placed his burden on the ground, and seeing Tahoser stagger, he said to her: "Be reassured. You rule the Pharaoh, and the Pharaoh rules the world." These were the first words he had spoken to her.