"And what an army! Were it not for the Greek corps, which keeps them in order as a dog watches sheep, the Egyptian soldiers today would obey only priests and the pharaoh would sink to the level of a miserable nomarch."
"Whence hast Thou learned this?" asked Tutmosis, with astonishment.
"Am I not of a priestly family? And besides, they taught me when I was not heir to the throne. Oh, when I become pharaoh after my father, may he live through eternity! I will put my bronze-sandaled foot on their necks. But first of all I will seize their treasures, which have always been bloated, but which from the time of Ramses the Great have begun to swell out, and today are so swollen that the treasure of the pharaoh is invisible because of them."
"Woe to me and to thee!" sighed Tutmosis. "Thou hast plans under which this hill would bend could it hear and understand them. And where are thy forces, thy assistance, thy warriors? Against thee the whole people will rise, led by a class of men with mighty influence. But who is on thy rider?"
Ramses listened and fell to thinking. At last he said,
"The army."
"A considerable part of it will follow the priests."
"The Greek corps."
"A barrel of water in the Nile."
"The officials."