"This is how Saakera is going to help me," the king went on. "We shall set out for Memphis together to see Horemheb and on the way I shall go ashore somewhere in the night—and that will be the last they will see of me."
"Will you go alone?"
"Yes. I will take off my royal dress, put on the clothes of a nab priest—you know, those that walk about the high roads collecting money for the temples, and go off with a staff and wallet."
"What for? What will you do?"
"What I have done all my life. Do you remember, Iserker said 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight'? Well, I shall be preparing it. I will leave the great and go to the small, leave the first and go to the last; the first have not heard me—perhaps the last will...."
He was saying extraordinary things in a dull, dreary way. He kept yawning; perhaps those who 'sit in the dust on their heels in the underworld' yawn like that, too.
"Well, why are you silent? Do you think I am mad?"
"No, it isn't that...."
"Speak, don't be afraid."
"I think .... forgive me, sire, but all you kings are like babies: you don't know what poor, hard life is like. As soon as you have gone you will perish senselessly—of thirst, of hunger, from a wild beast, or a brigand's knife. You will be like a naked child on naked earth...."