"It is a marvel to me that Thou wishest, worthiness, to disturb our lord with such questions. It is as if Thou wert to beg him not to destroy locusts which devour what is on the fields."
"But they are innocent people."
"We, worthy lord, cannot know that, for law and the courts decide as to guilt and innocence. One thing is clear to me, the state cannot suffer an attack on any one's garden, and especially cannot suffer that hands should be raised against property of the erpatr."
"Thou speakest justly, but where are the guilty?" answered Ramses.
"Where there are no guilty there must at least be men who are punished. Not the guilt of a man, but the punishment which follows a crime, teaches others that they are not to commit the crime in question."
"I see," interrupted the heir, "that your worthiness will not support my prayer."
"Wisdom flows from thy lips, erpatr," answered the priest. "Never shall I give my lord a counsel which would expose the dignity of power to a blow."
The prince returned home pained and astonished. He felt that an injury had been done to some hundreds of people, and he saw that he could not save them any more than he could rescue a man on whom an obelisk or the column of a temple had fallen.
"My hands are too weak to rear this edifice," thought the prince, with anguish of spirit.
For the first time he felt that there was a power infinitely greater than his will, the interest of the state, which even the all-powerful pharaoh acknowledges and before which he the erpatr must bend himself.