"More beautiful things I have not seen except in the temples or in the palaces of my father. But since only rich people can buy them, I do not see how the state treasury can have much profit from those objects."
The nomarch was astonished at the young lord's indifference, and was alarmed by his anxiety about income; but wishing to satisfy Ramses, he began then to conduct him through the royal factories.
One day they went to buildings where slaves were grinding flour in many hundred hand-mills and in mortars. They went to bakeries where men were baking bread and rusks to feed the army, and to places where preserved fish and meat were in course of preparation. They examined great tanneries, and shops where sandals were made, foundries where copper was cast into arms and utensils. After that, brickyards, guilds of weavers and tailors.
These establishments were situated in the eastern part of the city. Ramses at first looked at them with interest, but very soon he was disgusted with the sight of laborers who were timid, lean, sickly in complexion, and who had scars left by sticks on their shoulders. Thenceforth he stopped only briefly at factories. He preferred to look at the environs of the city of Anu. Far to the east he could see the desert where a year earlier the maneuvers had taken place between his corps and Nitager's. He saw, like a thing on the palm of his hand, the road by which his regiments had marched, the place where because of the beetles the military engines had to turn to the desert, and perhaps even the tree on which the canal digger had hanged himself.
From that elevation over there in company with Tutmosis he had looked at the blooming land of Goshen and cursed the priesthood. And there among the hills he had met Sarah, toward whom his heart had flamed up on a sudden.
Today what changes! He had ceased to hate the priests from the hour that by the influence of Herhor he had received the army corps and the office of viceroy. He had become indifferent to Sarah, but that child whose mother she would be grew to him more and more important.
"What is she doing there?" thought the prince. "I have not had news from her this long time."
While he was looking on those eastern hills in this way, and thinking of the recent past, Ranuzer at the head of his escort felt certain that the prince had observed abuses in the factories and was meditating over means of punishment.
"I am curious to know what he discovered," thought the worthy nomarch. "Is it that half the bricks are sold to the Phoenicians, or that ten thousand sandals are lacking in the factory, or perhaps some low wretch has whispered to him about the foundries?"
And the nomarch's heart was anxious.