All these characteristics went to form a remarkable beauty, which Petamounoph's daughter had been unable to resist. Since the day when Poeri had by chance appeared to her, leaning upon the gallery of the building--which was his favourite place when he was not busy with the farm work--she had returned many times under pretext of driving, and had made her chariot pass under the balcony of the villa; but although she had put on her handsomest tunics, fastened around her neck her richest necklaces and encircled her wrists with her most wondrously chased bracelets, wreathed her hair with the freshest lotus-flowers, drawn to the temples the black line of her eyes, and brightened her cheeks with rouge, Poeri had never seemed to pay the smallest attention to her. And yet Tahoser was rarely beautiful, and the love which the pensive tenant of the villa disdained, the Pharaoh would willingly have purchased at a great price. In exchange for the priest's daughter he would have given Twea, Taia, Amense, Hont-Reche, his Asiatic captives, his vases of gold and silver, his necklaces of gems, his war chariots, his invincible army, his sceptre,--all, in a word, even his tomb, on which since the beginning of his reign had been working in the darkness thousands upon thousands of workmen. Love is not the same in the hot regions swept by a fiery wind as on the icy shores where calm descends from heaven with the cold; it is not blood but fire that flows in the veins. So Tahoser languished and fainted, though she breathed perfumes, surrounded herself with flowers, and drank draughts that bring forgetfulness. Music wearied her or overexcited her feelings; she had ceased to take any pleasure in the dances of her companions; at night, sleep fled from her eyelids, and breathless, stifling, her breast heaving with sighs, she would leave her sumptuous couch and stretch herself out upon the broad slabs of the pavement, pressing her bosom against the hard granite as if she wished to breathe in its coolness. On the night which followed the triumphal entry of the Pharaoh, Tahoser felt so unhappy and life seemed so empty that she determined not to die without having made at least one last effort. She wrapped herself up in a piece of common stuff, kept on but a single bracelet of odoriferous wood, twisted a piece of striped gauze around her head, and with the first light of the dawn, without being heard by Nofre, who was dreaming of the handsome Ahmosis, she left her room, crossed the garden, drew the bolts of the water gate, proceeded to the quay, waked a waterman asleep in his papyrus boat, and had herself transported to the other bank of the stream. Staggering and pressing her little hand to her heart to still its beating, she drew near Poeri's dwelling. It was now broad daylight, and the gates were opening to give passage to the ox teams going to work, and to the flocks going forth to pasture.