"Never mind," Yubra said. "Whichever way it begins, the end will be the same: the earth will turn upside down—and glory be to Aton!"
"Don't talk so loud, brother—if they heard you they would give you a beating."
"No danger of that!" a stupid looking youth said, with a grin, lisping as though his tongue were too big for his mouth; he was Zia, the Carpenter, nicknamed the Flea. "It is all one to us—Amon or Aton. So long as bread is cheaper than fish let the rest go hang!"
"You are a stupid man, Flea!" said the cauldron maker, Min, a sullen and pompous old man, with colorless eyes that looked very light in his face black with soot. "Who is Amon's son, Khonsu? Why, Osiris-Bata—the Spirit of Bread. If the Spirit leaves the earth, there will be no more bread and we will all perish like midges!"
"And is it true, mates," the Flea lisped, "that our dear golden Khonsu is to be melted into money to buy bread for the poor?"
"What is heavier than lead and what name has it, other than foolishness?" said Decanter, the scholar, looking at him with the self importance of a learned man.
"And are you going to eat that bread?" Min asked, also looking at Flea with contempt.
"I? It's all one to me! I will do what everybody else does," he answered, smiling cautiously and shrugging his shoulders.
"Everybody will eat it, everybody!" the consumptive little cobbler Mar said hurriedly, waving his hands and coughing. "The pig gulps down a baby and doesn't care—it goes on grunting just the same; and so the people will eat the god and say 'that's not enough, give us some more'!"
"Well, we shall indeed be scoundrels if we give away the holy image of god to be defiled!" cried a giant with the face of a child—Hafra, the blacksmith, striking his right fist on his left palm.