"This is the Egypt of our day," continued Pentuer. "Laborers are in indigence, scribes are wealthy, the treasury is not so full as it once was. But now."
He gave a sign, and a thing unexpected took place there before them.
Certain hands seized grain, fruit, stuffs from the platforms of the pharaoh and the officials; and when the amount of the goods had decreased greatly, those same hands began to seize and lead away laborers, their wives and children.
The spectators looked with amazement at the peculiar methods of those mysterious persons. Suddenly some one cried out,
"Those are Phoenicians! They plunder us in that way."
"That is it, holy fathers," said Pentuer. "Those are the hands of Phoenicians concealed in the midst of us; they plunder the pharaoh and the scribes, and lead away laborers captive when there is nothing to drag from them."
"Yes! They are jackals! A curse on Phoenicians! Expel them, the wretches!" cried the priests. "It is they who inflict the greatest damage on Egypt."
Not all, however, shouted in that way.
When there was silence, Pentuer commanded to take the torches to the other side of the court, and thither he conducted his hearers. There were no tableaux there, but a kind of industrial exhibition.
"Be pleased to look," said he. "During the nineteenth dynasty foreigners sent us these things: we received perfumes from Punt; gold, iron weapons, and chariots of war came from Syria. That is all.