It happened one night that the slaves stole around and woke each other.
Jesus became aware of the subdued noise and asked the cause. One
approached him and whispered, "Pharaoh weeps!" Like a mysterious
breath of wind it went through the palace, "Pharaoh weeps!" Then all
was still again, and the dreaming night lay over everything.

Jesus did not lie down again on the soft cushions, he rested on the
cool floor and thought. The king weeps! Arabia and India, Greece and
Rome have sent their costliest treasures to Memphis. Phoenician ships
cruise off the coasts of Gaul, Albion, and Germany in order to obtain
treasure for the great Pharaoh. His people surround him day after day
with homage, his life is at its prime. And he weeps? Was it not
perhaps that he sobbed in his dreams, or it may be laughed? But the
watchers think he weeps.




CHAPTER VII

And the days passed by. As the king had said, the boy was free. But
he stayed on at the palace because he hoped one day to find the room in
which the manuscripts were kept. He often strolled through the town
and the palm-grove down to the river to see his parents. Thousands of
slaves were working at the sluices of the stream which fertilised the
land. The overseer scourged them lustily, so that many of them fell
down exhausted and even dying. Jesus looked on and denounced such
barbarity, until he, too, received a blow. Then he went out to the
Pyramids where the Pharaohs slept, and listened if they were not
weeping. He went into the Temple of Osiris and looked at the monster