An Egyptian Princess — Complete, Georg Ebers [best ereader for academics txt] 📗

enables him to render the Chaldoeans in their astronomical observations from the tower of Bel. Onuphis is nearly eighty, but his mind is as clear as ever, and when I saw him yesterday and asked him to help me, his eyes brightened as he promised to do so. Your father was one of his judges, but he bears you no malice and sends you a greeting.”

Nebenchari’s eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the ground during this tale. When Phanes had finished, he gave him a penetrating look and said: “Where are my papers?”

“They are in Onuphis’ hands. He is looking among them for the document I want.”

“I expected to hear that. Be so good as to tell me what the box is like, which Hib thought proper to bring over to Persia?”

“It is a small ebony trunk, with an exquisitely-carved lid. In the centre is a winged beetle, and on the four corners...”

“That contains nothing but a few of my father’s notices and memorandums,” said Nebenchari, drawing a deep breath of relief.

“They will very likely be sufficient for my purpose. I do not know whether you have heard, that I stand as high as possible in Cambyses’ favor.”

“So much the better for you. I can assure you, however, that the paper. which would have been most useful to you have all been left behind in Egypt.”

“They were in a large chest made of sycamore-wood and painted in colors.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because—now listen well to what I am going to say, Nebenchari—because I can tell you (I do not swear, for our great master Pythagoras forbade oaths), that this very chest, with all it contained, was burnt in the grove of the temple of Neith, in Sais, by order of the king.”

Phanes spoke slowly, emphasizing every syllable, and the words seemed to strike the Egyptian like so many flashes of lightning. His quiet coolness and deliberation gave way to violent emotion; his cheeks glowed and his eyes flashed. But only for one single minute; then the strong emotion seemed to freeze, his burning cheeks grew pale. “You are trying to make me hate my friends, in order to gain me as your ally,” he said, coldly and calmly. “I know you Greeks very well. You are so intriguing and artful, that there is no lie, no fraud, too base, if it will only help to gain your purpose.”

“You judge me and my countrymen in true Egyptian fashion; that is, they are foreigners, and therefore must be bad men. But this time your suspicions happen to be misplaced. Send for old Hib; he will tell you whether I am right or not.”

Nebenchari’s face darkened, as Hib came into the room.

“Come nearer,” said he in a commanding tone to the old man.

Hib obeyed with a shrug of the shoulders.

“Tell me, have you taken a bribe from this man? Yes or no? I must know the truth; it can influence my future for good or evil. You are an old and faithful servant, to whom I owe a great deal, and so I will forgive you if you were taken in by his artifices, but I must know the truth. I conjure you to tell me by the souls of your fathers gone to Osiris!”

The old man’s sallow face turned ashy pale as he heard these words. He gulped and wheezed some time before he could find an answer, and at last, after choking down the tears which had forced their way to his eyes, said, in a half-angry, half-whining tone: “Didn’t I say so? they’ve bewitched him, they’ve ruined him in this wicked land. Whatever a man would do himself, he thinks others are capable of. Aye, you may look as angry as you like; it matters but little to me. What can it matter indeed to an old man, who has served the same family faithfully and honestly for sixty years, if they call him at last a rogue, a knave, a traitor, nay even a murderer, if it should take their fancy.”

And the scalding tears flowed down over the old man’s cheeks, sorely against his will.

The easily-moved Phanes clapped him on the shoulder and said, turning to Nebenchari: “Hib is a faithful fellow. I give you leave to call me a rascal, if he has taken one single obolus from me.”

The physician did not need Phanes’ assurance; he had known his old servant too well and too long not to be able to read his simple, open features, on which his innocence was written as clearly as in the pages of an open book. “I did not mean to reproach you, old Hib,” he said kindly, coming up to him. “How can any one be so angry at a simple question?”

“Perhaps you expect me to be pleased at such a shameful suspicion?”

“No, not that; but at all events now you can tell me what has happened at our house since I left.”

“A pretty story that is! Why only to think of it makes my mouth as bitter, as if I were chewing wormwood.”

“You said I had been robbed.”

“Yes indeed: no one was ever so robbed before. There would have been some comfort if the knaves had belonged to the thieves’ caste, for then we should have got the best part of our property back again, and should not after all have been worse off than many another; but when...”

[The cunning son of the architect, who robbed the treasure-house of Rhampsinitus was, according to Herodotus, (II. 120), severely punished; but in Diod. I. 80. we see that when thieves acknowledged themselves to the authorities to be such, they were not punished, though a strict watch was set over them. According to Diodorus, there was a president of the thieves’ caste, from whom the stolen goods could be reclaimed on relinquishment of a fourth part of the same. This strange rule possibly owed its rise to the law, which compelled every Egyptian to appear once in each year before the authorities of his district and give an account of his means of subsistence. Those who made false statements were punished with death. Diod. I. 77. Thus no one who valued his life could escape the watchful eye of the police, and the thief sacrificed the best part of his gains in order to save his life.]

“Keep to the point, for my time is limited.”

“You need not tell me that; I see old Hib can’t do anything right here in Persia. Well, be it so, you’re master; you must give orders; I am only the servant, I must obey. I won’t forget it. Well, as I was saying, it was just at the time when the great Persian embassy came over to Sais to fetch Nitetis, and made everybody stare at them as if they were monsters or prodigies, that this shameful thing happened. I was sitting on the mosquito-tower just as the sun was setting, playing with my little grandson, my Baner’s eldest boy—he’s a fine strapping little lad now, wonderfully sharp and strong for his age. The rogue was just telling me how his father, the Egyptians do that when their wives leave the children too much alone—had hidden his mother’s shoes, and I was laughing heartily, because my Baner won’t let any of the little ones live with me, she always says I spoil them, and so I was glad she should have the trick played her—when all of a sudden there was such a