The pharaoh had on his side all the people, all the army, many priests, and the majority of the civil dignitaries. The council could reckon on hardly two thousand adherents, on its treasures and on its incomparably wise organization. The forces were utterly unequal, but the issue of the battle was very doubtful.
"Then ye have determined to destroy the pharaoh?" asked Pentuer.
"Not at all. We only wish to save the state." "In that case what should Ramses XIII do?" "What he will do I know not. But I know what his father did," answered Herhor. "Ramses XII began to govern in the same impetuous and tyrannical fashion, but when money failed him, and his most zealous adherents began to despise him, he turned to the gods. He surrounded himself with priests, he learned from them, nay, he even married a daughter of the high priest Amenhotep. And, after a few years, he went so far that he became himself not only a pious, but a very learned high priest."
"But if the pharaoh will not follow that example?" "Then we shall dispense with him," said Herhor. "Listen to me Pentuer," continued he, after a while. "I know not only the acts, but even the thoughts of that pharaoh of thine, who, moreover, has not been solemnly crowned yet, hence for us he is nothing. I know that he wants to make the priests his servants, and himself sole lord of Egypt.
"But such a plan is stupid, it is even treasonable. Not the pharaohs, as Thou knowest well, but the gods and the priests created Egypt. It is not the pharaohs who mark the rise and fall of the Nile and regulate its overflows; it is not the pharaohs who teach the people to sow, to gather fruits and rear cattle. It is not the pharaohs who cure diseases and watch over the safety of the state against foreign enemies.
"What would happen, tell me that, were our order to yield Egypt to the mercy of the pharaohs? The wisest pharaohs have behind them the experience of a few years at the longest, but the priestly order has investigated and taught during tens of thousands of years. The mightiest ruler has two eyes and two hands, while we possess thousands of eyes and thousands of hands in all provinces at home, and in all foreign countries.
"Can the activity of a pharaoh equal ours; and when opinions differ who should yield, we or the pharaoh?"
"Well, what am I to do now?" inquired Pentuer.
"Do what that stripling commands if Thou betray not holy secrets. And leave the rest to time. I wish most sincerely that the youth called Ramses XIII might come to his senses, and I suppose that he would were it not that he has attached himself to disgusting traitors over whom the hands of the gods are now suspended."
Pentuer took farewell of the high priest. He was filled with dark forebodings, but he did not fail in spirit, since he knew that whatever he might gain in improving the condition of the common man would remain, even were the pharaoh to bend before the power of the priestly order.