One hour after sunset the pharaoh left Hebron's villa and returned slowly to his palace. He was full of imaginings, he was dreamy, and he thought the high priests were great fools to resist him. Since Egypt became Egypt there had not been a kindlier pharaoh.
All at once, from out a clump of fig trees sprang a man in a dark mantle, and barred the road to Ramses. The pharaoh, to see the man better, approached his face to the face of the stranger and cried suddenly,
"O wretch, is it thou? Go to the guard house!"
It was Lykon. Ramses seized him by the neck; the Greek hissed and knelt on the ground. At the same moment the pharaoh felt a sharp pain in the left side of his stomach.
"Dost Thou bite too?" cried Ramses. He seized the Greek with both hands, and when he heard the cracking of his broken spine he hurled him off in disgust.
Lykon fell quivering in the convulsions of death.
The pharaoh moved back a couple of steps. He examined his body and discovered the handle of a dagger.
"He has wounded me!"
He drew the slender steel from his side and pressed the wound.
"I wonder," thought he, "if any of my counselors has a plaster?" He felt weak and hurried forward. Right at the palace one of the officers stood before him and said, "Tutmosis is dead; the traitor Eunana slew him."