"Ay!" she continued. "Men find pleasure in grapes by treading them
down, and when the must is drunk the skins are thrown on the dung-hill.
Grape-skins, that is what I am--but you need not look at me so pitifully;
I was grapes once, and poor and despised as I am now, no one can take
from me what I have had and have been. Mine has been a life out of a
thousand, a complete life, full to overflowing of joy and suffering, of
love and hate, of delight, despair, and revenge. Only to talk of it
raises me to a seat by thy throne there. No, let me be, I am used now to
squatting on the ground; but I knew thou wouldst hear me to the end, for
once I too was one of you. Extremes meet in all things--I know it by
experience. The greatest men will hold out a hand to a beautiful woman,
and time was when I could lead you all as with a rope. Shall I begin at
the beginning? Well--I seldom am in the mood for it now-a-days. Fifty
years ago I sang a song with this voice of mine; an old crow like me?
sing! But so it was. My father was a man of rank, the governor of
Abydos; when the first Rameses took possession of the throne my father
was faithful to the house of thy fathers, so the new king sent us all to
the gold mines, and there they all died--my parents, brothers, and
sisters. I only survived by some miracle. As I was handsome and sang
well, a music master took me into his band, brought me to Thebes, and
wherever there was a feast given in any great house, Beki was in request.
Of flowers and money and tender looks I had a plentiful harvest; but I
was proud and cold, and the misery of my people had made me bitter at an
age when usually even bad liquor tastes of honey. Not one of all the gay
young fellows, princes' sons, and nobles, dared to touch my hand. But my
hour was to come; the handsomest and noblest man of them all, and grave
and dignified too--was Assa, the old Mohar's father, and grandfather of
Pentaur--no, I should say of Paaker, the pioneer; thou hast known him.
Well, wherever I sang, he sat opposite me, and gazed at me, and I could
not take my eyes off him, and--thou canst tell the rest! no! Well, no