The Pharaoh, raging and anxious on hearing of the disappearance of Tahoser, had given way to that desire for change which possesses a heart tormented by an unsatisfied passion. To the deep grief of Amense, Hont-RechÉ, and Twea, his favourites, who had endeavoured to retain him in the Summer Palace by all the resources of feminine coquetry, he now inhabited the Northern Palace on the other side of the Nile. His fierce preoccupation was irritated by the presence and the chatter of his women; they displeased him because they were not Tahoser. He now thought ugly those beauties who had seemed to him formerly so fair; their young, slender, graceful bodies, their voluptuous attitudes, their long eyes brightened by antimony and flashing with desire, their purple lips, white teeth, and languishing smiles,—everything in them, even the perfume of their cool skin, as delicate as a bouquet of flowers or a box of scent, had become odious to him. He seemed to be angry with them for having loved them, and to be unable to understand how he could have been smitten by such vulgar charms. When Twea touched his breast with the slender, pink finger of her little hand, shaking with emotion, as if to recall the remembrance of former familiarities; when Hont-RechÉ placed before him the draught-board supported by two lions back to back, in order to play a game; when Amense presented him with a lotus-flower with respectful, supplicating grace, he could scarcely refrain from striking them with his sceptre, and his royal eyes flashed with such disdain that the poor women who had ventured on such boldness, withdrew abashed, their eyes wet with tears, and leaned silently against the painted wall, trying by their motionlessness to appear to be part of the paintings on the frescoes.

To avoid these scenes of tears and violence, he had withdrawn to the palace of Thebes, alone, taciturn, and sombre; and there, instead of remaining seated on his throne in the solemn attitude of the gods and of kings, who, being almighty, neither move nor make a gesture, he walked feverishly up and down through the vast halls. Strange was it to see that tall Pharaoh with imposing mien, as formidable as the granite colossi, his like, making the stone floors resound under his curved sandals. When he passed, the terrified guards seemed to be petrified and to turn to stone. They remained breathless, and not even the double ostrich-feather in their headgear dared tremble. When he had passed, they scarce ventured to whisper, "What is the matter to-day with the Pharaoh?"

Had he returned from his expedition a beaten man, he could not have been more morose and sombre. If, instead of having won ten victories, slain twenty thousand enemies, brought back two thousand virgins chosen from among the fairest, a hundred loads of gold-dust, a thousand loads of ebony and elephants' tusks, without counting the rare products and the strange animals,—if, instead of all this, Pharaoh had seen his army cut to pieces, his war chariots overthrown and broken, if he had escaped alone from the rout under a shower of arrows, dusty, blood-covered, taking the reins from the hands of his driver dead by his side,—he certainly could not have appeared more gloomy and more desperate. After all, the land of Egypt produces soldiers in abundance; innumerable horses neigh and paw the ground in the palace stables; and workmen could soon bend wood, melt copper, sharpen brass. The fortune of war is changeable, but a disaster may be atoned for. To have, however, wished for a thing which did not at once come to him, to have met with an obstacle between his will and the carrying out of that will, to have hurled like a javelin a desire which had not struck its mark,—that was what amazed the Pharaoh who dwelt in the higher plane of almightiness. For one moment it occurred to him that he was only a man.

So he wandered through the vast courts, down the avenues of giant pillars, passed under the mighty pylons, between the lofty monolithic obelisks and the colossi which gazed upon him with their great, frightened eyes. He traversed the hypostyle hall and the maze of the granitic forest with its one hundred and sixty-two pillars tall and strong as towers. The figures of gods, of kings, and of symbolic beings painted on the walls seemed to fix upon him their great eyes, drawn in black upon their profile masks, the urÆus snakes to twist and swell their hoods, the bird-faced divinities to stretch out their necks, the globes to spread over the cornices their fluttering wings of stone. A strange, fantastic life animated these curious figures, and peopled with living swarms the solitudes of the vast hall, which was as large as an ordinary palace. The divinities, the ancestors, the chimerical monsters, eternally motionless, were amazed to see the Pharaoh, ordinarily as calm as themselves, striding up and down as though he were a man of flesh, and not of porphyry and basalt.

Weary of roaming about that mysterious forest of pillars that upbore a granite heaven, like a lion which seeks the track of its prey and scents with its wrinkled nose the moving sand of the desert, the Pharaoh ascended one of the terraces of the palace, stretched himself on a low couch, and sent for Timopht.

Timopht appeared at once, and advanced from the top of the stairs to the Pharaoh, prostrating himself at every step. He dreaded the wrath of the master whose favour he had, for a moment, hoped he had gained. Would the skill he had shown in discovering the home of Tahoser be a sufficient excuse for the crime of losing track of the lovely maid?

Raising one knee and leaving the other bent, Timopht stretched out his arms with a supplicating gesture.

"O King, do not doom me to death or to be beaten beyond measure. The beauteous Tahoser, the daughter of Petamounoph, on whom your desire deigned to descend as the hawk swoops down upon the dove, will doubtless be found; and when, returned to her home, she sees your magnificent gifts, her heart will be touched, and she will come of herself to take, among the women that dwell in your harem, the place which you will assign to her."

"Did you question her servants and her slaves?" said the King. "The stick loosens the most rebellious tongue, and suffering makes men and women say what they would otherwise hide."

"NofrÉ and Souhem, her favourite maid and her oldest servant, told me that they had noticed the bolts of the garden gate drawn back, that probably their mistress had gone out that way. The gate opens on the river, and the water does not preserve the track of boats."

"What did the boatmen of the Nile say?"

"They had seen nothing. One man alone said that a poorly dressed woman crossed the stream with the first light of day; but it could not be the beautiful and rich Tahoser, whose face you have yourself noticed, and who walks like a queen in her superb garments."

Timopht's logic did not appear to convince the Pharaoh. He leaned his chin on his hand and reflected for a few moments. Poor Timopht waited in silence, fearing an explosion of fury. The King's lips moved as if he were speaking to himself.

"That mean dress was a disguise. Yes, it must have been. Thus disguised, she crossed to the other side of the river. Timopht is a fool, who cannot see anything. I have a great mind to have him thrown to the crocodiles or beaten to death. But what could be her reason? A maid of high birth, the daughter of a high-priest, to escape thus from her palace, alone and without informing any one of her intention! It may be there is some love affair at the bottom of this mystery."

As this thought occurred to him, the Pharaoh's face flushed red as if under the reflection of a fire; the blood had rushed from his heart to his face. The redness was followed by dreadful pallor; his eyebrows writhed like the urÆus in his diadem, his mouth was contracted, he grated his teeth, and his face became so terrible that the terrified Timopht fell on his face upon the pavement as falls a dead man.

But the Pharaoh resumed his coolness, his face regained its majestic, weary, placid look, and seeing that Timopht did not rise, he kicked him disdainfully.

When Timopht, who already saw himself stretched on the funeral bed supported by jackal's feet in the Memnonia quarter, his side open, his stomach emptied, and himself ready to be plunged into a bath of pickle,—when Timopht raised himself, he dared not look up to the King, but remained crouched on his heels, a prey to the bitterest anguish.

"Come, Timopht!" said His Majesty, "rise up, run, and despatch emissaries on all sides; have temples, palaces, houses, villas, gardens, yea, the meanest of huts searched, and find Tahoser. Send chariots along every road; have the Nile traversed in every direction by boats; go yourself and ask those whom you meet if they have not seen such and such a woman. Violate the tombs, if she has taken refuge in the abodes of death, far within some passage or hypogeum. Seek her out as Isis sought her husband Osiris torn away by Typhon, and, dead or alive, bring her back,—or by the urÆus of my pschent, by the lotus of my sceptre, you shall perish in hideous tortures."

Timopht went off with the speed of a deer to carry out the orders of the Pharaoh, who, somewhat calmer, took one of those poses of tranquil grandeur which the sculptors love to give to the colossi set up at the gates of the temples and palaces, and calm as beseems those whose sandals, covered with drawings of captives with bound elbows, rest upon the heads of nations, he waited.

A roar as of thunder sounded around the palace, and had the sky not been of unchangeable, lapis-lazuli blue it might have been thought that a storm had burst unexpectedly. The sound was caused by the swiftly revolving wheels of the chariots galloping off in every direction, and shaking the very ground. Soon the Pharaoh perceived from the top of the terrace the boats cleaving the stream under the impulse of the rowers, and his messengers scattering on the other bank through the country. The Libyan chain, with its rosy light, and its sapphire blue shadows, bounded the horizon and formed a background to the giant buildings of Rameses, AmenhÔtep, and Amen Phtases; the pylons with their sloping angles, the walls with their spreading cornices, the colossi with their hands resting on their knees, stood out, gilded by the sunbeams, their size undiminished by distance.

But the Pharaoh looked not at these proud edifices. Amid the clumps of palms and the cultivated fields, houses and painted kiosks rose here and there, standing out against the brilliant colours of the vegetation.

Under one of these roofs, on one of these terraces, no doubt, Tahoser was hiding; and by some spell he wished he could raise them or make them transparent.

Hours followed on hours. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, casting its last rays on Thebes, and the messengers had not returned. The Pharaoh preserved his motionless attitude. Night fell on the city, cool, calm, blue; the stars came out and twinkled in the deep azure. On the corner of the terrace the Pharaoh, silent, impassible, stood out dark like a basalt statue fixed upon the entablature. Several times the birds of night swept around his head ere settling on it, but terrified by his deep, slow breathing, they fled with startled wings.

From the height where he sat, the King overlooked the city lying at his feet. Out of the mass of bluish shadow uprose the obelisks with their sharp pyramidions; the pylons, giant doors traversed by rays; high cornices; the colossi rising shoulder-high above the sea of buildings; the propylÆa; the pillars, with capitals swelled out like huge granite flowers; the corners of temples and of palaces, brought out by a silvery touch of light. The sacred pools spread out shimmering like polished metal; the human-headed and the ram-headed sphinxes aligned along the avenues, stretched out their hind-quarters; and the flat roofs were multiplied infinitely, white under the moonlight, in masses cut here and there into great slices by the squares and the streets. Red points studded the darkness as if the stars had let sparks fall upon the earth. These were lamps still burning in the sleeping city. Still farther, between the less crowded buildings, faintly seen shafts of palm trees waved their fans of leaves; and beyond, the contours and the shapes were merged in a vaporous immensity, for even the eagle's glance could not have reached the limits of Thebes; and on the other side old Hopi was flowing majestically towards the sea.

Soaring in sight and thought over that vast city of which he was the absolute master, the Pharaoh reflected sadly on the limits set to human power, and his desire, like a raging vulture, gnawed at his heart. He said to himself: "All these houses contain beings who at the sight of me bow their faces into the dust, to whom my will is the will of the gods. When I pass upon my golden car or in my litter borne by the oËris, virgins feel their bosoms swell as their long, timid glance follows me; the priests burn incense to me in their censers, the people wave palms and scatter flowers; the whistling of one of my arrows makes the nations tremble; and the walls of pylons huge as precipitous mountains are scarce sufficient to record my victories; the quarries can scarce furnish granite enough for my colossal statues. Yet once, in my superb satiety, I form a wish, and that wish I cannot fulfil. Timopht does not reappear. No doubt he has failed. Oh, Tahoser, Tahoser! How great is the happiness you will have to bestow on me to make up for this long waiting!"

Meanwhile the messengers, Timopht at their head, were visiting the houses, examining the roads, inquiring after the priest's daughter, describing her to the travellers they met; but no one could answer them. The first messenger appeared on the terrace and announced to the Pharaoh that Tahoser could not be found. The Pharaoh stretched out his sceptre, and the messenger fell dead, in spite of the proverbial hardness of the Egyptian skull. A second came up; he stumbled against the body of his comrade stretched on the slabs; he trembled, for he saw that the Pharaoh was angry.

"What of Tahoser?" said the Pharaoh, without changing his attitude.

"O Majesty! all trace of her is lost," replied the poor wretch, kneeling in the darkness before the black shadow, which was more like a statue of Osiris than a living king.

The granite arm was outstretched from the motionless torso, and the metal sceptre fell like a thunderbolt. The second messenger rolled on the ground by the side of the first.

The third shared the same fate.

Timopht, in the course of his search, reached the house of PoËri, who, having returned from his nocturnal excursion, had been amazed that morning at not seeing the sham Hora. Harphre and the servants who, the night before, had supped with her, did not know what had become of her; her room had been found empty; she had been sought for in vain through the gardens, the cellars, the granaries, and the washing-places.

PoËri replied, when questioned by Timopht, that it was true that a young girl had presented herself at his gate in the supplicating posture of misfortune, imploring hospitality on her knees; that he had received her kindly; had offered her food and shelter; but that she had left in a mysterious fashion for a reason which he could not fathom. In what direction had she gone? That he did not know. No doubt, having rested, she had continued on her way to some unknown place. She was beautiful, sad, wore a garment of common stuff, and appeared to be poor. Did the name of Hora which she had given stand for that of Tahoser? It was for Timopht to answer that question.

Provided with this information, Timopht returned to the palace, and keeping well out of the reach of the Pharaoh's sceptre, he repeated what he had learned.

"What did she go to PoËri's for?" said the Pharaoh to himself. "If Hora is really Tahoser, she loves PoËri. And yet, no! for she would not have fled thus, after having been received under his roof. I shall find her again, even if I have to upset the whole of Egypt from the Cataracts to the Delta."

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