The pharaoh smiled, and again he meditated.
"Each man wants to be happy himself; but if Thou wish to give happiness to all men, each one will seize thy hand as he would if Thou wert drawing an aching tooth from him.
"Therefore a pharaoh must have decision. Therefore my divine father did ill when he neglected the workers and trusted beyond bounds in the priesthood. He left me a grievous inheritance, but I will improve it.
"At the Soda Lakes there was also a difficult question, more difficult than this one. Here are only gabblers and timid cowards; there stood armed men ready to go to death.
"One battle will open our eyes more widely than tens of years in peaceful management. Whoso says to himself, 'I will burst through this hindrance,' will burst through it. But he who hesitates must yield."
Darkness came. In the palace the watches were changed, and in the remoter halls torches were lighted. But no one dared enter the sovereign's chamber unless commanded.
Ramses, wearied by sleeplessness, by the journey of the day previous, by the occupations of that day, dropped into an armchair. It seemed to him that he had been pharaoh for centuries, and he could not believe that one day had not passed since he had been at the pyramids.
"One day? Impossible!"
Then he thought that perhaps the spirits of the former pharaohs had settled in the heart of their heir. It must be so, for otherwise whence could such a feeling of age or remoteness settle down in him? And why did governing the state seem today a simple thing, while two months before he was alarmed when he thought that he could not govern.
"One day?" repeated he, in spirit. "But I am a thousand years in this palace!"