"No," answered the prince, without hesitation. "When the pharaohs have once shown their power, they may be merciful; unless some one should resist their orders."
"And still this young man is only twenty three years of age!" thought the frightened priest.
They turned toward the river and walked some time in silence.
"Lie down, lord," said the priest, after a while; "sleep. We have made no small journey."
"But can I sleep?" answered the prince. "First I am surrounded by those legions of laborers who, according to thy view, perished in building the pyramids Just as if they could have lived forever had they not raised those structures! Then, again, I think of his holiness, my father, who is dying, perhaps, at this very moment. Common men suffer, common men spill their blood! Who will prove to me that my divine father is not tortured more on his costly bed than thy toilers who are carrying heated stones to a building?
"Laborers, always laborers! For thee, O priest, only he deserves compassion who bites lice. A whole series of pharaohs have gone into their graves; some died in torments, some were killed. But Thou thinkest not of them; Thou thinkest only of those whose service is that they begot other toilers who dipped up muddy water from the Nile, or thrust barley balls into the mouths of their milch cows.
"But my father and I? Was not my son slain, and also a woman of my household? Was Typhon compassionate to me in the desert? Do not my bones ache after a long journey? Do not missiles from Libyan slings whistle over my head? Have I a treaty with sickness, with pain, or with death, that they should be kinder to me than to thy toilers?
"Look there: the Asiatics are sleeping, and quiet has taken possession of their breasts; but I, their lord, have a heart full of yesterday's cares, and of fears for the morrow. Ask a toiling man of a hundred years whether in all his life he had as much sorrow as I have had during my power of a few months as commander and viceroy."
Before them rose slowly from the depth of the night a wonderful shade. It was an object fifty yards long and as high as a house of three stories, having at its side, as it were, a five-storied tower of uncommon structure.
"Here is the Sphinx," said the irritated prince, "purely priests' work! Whenever I see this, in the day or the night time, the question always tortures me: What is this, and what is the use of it? The pyramids I understand: Almighty pharaoh wished to show his power, and, perhaps, which was wiser, wished to secure eternal life which no thief or enemy might take from him. Drat this Sphinx! Evidently that is our sacred priestly order, which has a very large, wise head and lion's claws beneath it.