"I am here for the fourth time," said the heir, "and my heart is always filled with regret and astonishment. When a pupil in the higher school, I thought that, on ascending the throne, I would build something of more worth than the pyramid of Cheops. But today I am ready to laugh at my insolence when I think that the great pharaoh in building his tomb paid sixteen hundred talents (about ten million francs) for the vegetables alone which were used by the laborers. Where should I find sixteen hundred talents even for wages?"
"Envy not Cheops, lord," replied the priest. "Other pharaohs have left better works behind: lakes, canals, roads, schools, and temples."
"But may we compare those things with the pyramids?"
"Of course not," answered Pentuer, hurriedly. "In my eyes and in the eyes of all the people, each pyramid is a great crime, and that of Cheops, the greatest of all crimes."
"Thou art too much excited," said the prince.
"I am not. The pharaoh was building his immense tomb for thirty years; in the course of those years one hundred thousand people worked three months annually. And what good was there in that work? Whom did it feed, whom did it cure, to whom did it give clothing? At that work from ten to twenty thousand people perished yearly; that is, for the tomb of Cheops a half a million corpses were put into the earth. But the blood, the pain, the tears, who will reckon them?
"Therefore, wonder not, lord, that the Egyptian toiler to this day looks with fear toward the west, when above the horizon the triangular forms of the pyramids seem bloody or crimson. They are witnesses of his sufferings and fruitless labor.
"And to think that this will continue till those proofs of human pride are scattered into dust! But when will that be? For three thousand years those pyramids frighten men with their presence; their walls are smooth yet, and the immense inscriptions on them are legible."
"That night in the desert thy speech was different," interrupted the prince.
"For I was not looking at these. But when they are before my eyes, as at present, I am surrounded by the sobbing spirits of tortured toilers, and they whisper, 'See what they did with us! But our bones felt pain, and our hearts longed for rest from labor.'."