Jesus did not lie down again on the soft cushions,
he rested on the cool floor and thought. The
king weeps! Arabia and India, Greece and Rome
have sent their costliest treasures to Memphis.
Phoenician ships cruise off the coasts of Gaul, Albion,
and Germany in order to obtain treasure for the great
Pharaoh. His people surround him day after day
with homage, his life is at its prime. And he
weeps? Was it not perhaps that he sobbed in
his dreams, or it may be laughed? But the watchers
think he weeps.
CHAPTER VII
And the days passed by. As the king had said,
the boy was free. But he stayed on at the palace
because he hoped one day to find the room in which
the manuscripts were kept. He often strolled
through the town and the palm-grove down to the river
to see his parents. Thousands of slaves were
working at the sluices of the stream which fertilised
the land. The overseer scourged them lustily,
so that many of them fell down exhausted and even
dying. Jesus looked on and denounced such barbarity,
until he, too, received a blow. Then he went
out to the Pyramids where the Pharaohs slept, and
listened if they were not weeping. He went into
the Temple of Osiris and looked at the monster idols,
fat, soulless, ugly, between the rounded pillars.
He searched the palace untiringly for the hall in
which the writings were kept, and at last he came
upon it. But it was closed: its custodians
were hunting jackals and tigers in the desert.
They found it dark and dreary there among the great
minds of old; the splendour and luxury of the court
did not penetrate to the hall of writings.
Then nights came again when whispers ran through the
halls, “Pharaoh weeps.” And the
reason, too, was whispered. He had caused the
woman he loved best to be strangled, and now the astrologers
declared that she was innocent. One day the
king lay on his couch and desired that the boy from
the Nile should be summoned to fan him. As the
king was sick, Jesus agreed to go. Pharaoh was
ill-humoured and impatient, neither fan nor fanning
was right, and when the boy left off that was not
right either.
Then Jesus said suddenly: “Pharaoh, you
are sick.”
The king stared at him in astonishment. A page
dare to open his mouth and speak to the Son of Light!
When, however, he saw the sad, sincere expression
of sympathy in the boy’s countenance ho became
calmer, and said; “Yes, my boy, I am sick.”
“King,” said Jesus, “I know what
is the matter with you.”
“You know!”
“You keep shadows within and light without.
Reverse it.”
Directly the boy had said that Pharaoh got up, thinner
and taller than he usually appeared to be, and haughtily
pointed to the door, an angry light in his eyes.
The boy went out quietly, and did not look back.
But his words were not forgotten. In the noise
and tumult of the daytime Pharaoh did not hear them;
in the night, when all the brilliance was extinguished
and only the miserable and unhappy waked, he heard
softly echoed from wall to wall of his chamber, “Reverse
it! Bring the light inside!”
