Amen and bade him conduct the ceremonies of the evening. Then he sent
to the temple stores, put into service another boat and was ferried
over to the Libyan suburb of Thebes. He had himself borne in a litter
to the greater palace of Rameses II, and asked an audience with
Meneptah.

The king was at prayers in the temple of his father, close to the
palace, and the dusk of twilight was settling on the valley of the
Nile, before Loi was summoned to the council chamber.

The hall he entered was vast and full of deep shadows. The two windows
set in one wall, many feet above the floor, showed two spaces of
darkening sky. A single torch of aromatics flared and hissed beside
the throne dais. Tremendous wainscoting covered the base of the walls,
more than a foot above a man's height. It was massively carved with
colossal sheaves of lotus-blooms and sword-like palm-leaves. Columns
of great girth, bouquets of conventional stamens, ending in foliated
capitals, supported by the lofty ceiling. The few men gathered in
council were surrounded, over-shadowed, and dwarfed by monumental
strength and solemnity.

Behind a solid panel of carved cedar, which hedged the royal dais,
stood Meneptah. Above his head were the intricate drapings of a canopy
of gold tissue. On a level with his eyes, at his side, was the single
torch. His vision, like his father's, was defective. He was forty
years old, but appeared to be younger. His person was plump, and in
stature he was shorter than the average Egyptian. His coloring was
high and of uniform tint. The arch of the brow, and the conspicuous
distance between it and the eye below, the disdainful tension of the
nostril and the drooping corners of the mouth, gave his face the