“Is it not so, good folk?”—­and she turned to address some people who, while she prophesied, had assembled unseen by me—­“I’ve been speaking a spell over him, just to make a way for the virtue of my medicine—­la! la! there’s nothing like a spell.  If you don’t believe it, just you come to me next time your wives are barren; it’s better than scraping every pillar in the Temple of Osiris, I’ll warrant.  I’ll make ’em bear like a twenty-year-old palm.  But then, you see, you must know what to say—­that’s the point—­everything comes to a point at last. La! la!”

Now, when I heard all this, I, Harmachis, put my hand to my head, not knowing if I dreamed.  But presently looking up, I saw a grey-haired man among those who were gathered together, who watched us sharply, and afterwards I learned that this man was the spy of Ptolemy, the very man, indeed, who had wellnigh caused me to be slain of Pharaoh when I was in my cradle.  Then I understood why Atoua spoke so foolishly.

“Thine are strange spells, old wife,” the spy said.  “Thou didst speak of Pharaoh and the double crown and of the form fashioned by Ptah to bear it; is it not so?”

“Yea, yea—­part of the spell, thou fool; and what can one swear by better nowadays than by the Divine Pharaoh the Piper, whom, and whose music, may the Gods preserve to charm this happy land?—­what better than by the double crown he wears—­grace to great Alexander of Macedonia?  By the way, you know about everything:  have they got back his chlamys yet, which Mithridates took to Cos?  Pompey wore it last, didn’t he?—­in his triumph, too—­just fancy Pompey in the cloak of Alexander!—­a puppy-dog in a lion’s skin!  And talking of lions—­look what this lad hath done—­slain a lion with his own spear; and right glad you village folks should be to see it, for it was a very fierce lion—­just see his teeth and his claws—­his claws!—­they are enough to make a poor silly old woman like me shriek to look at them!  And the body there, the dead body—­the lion slew it.  Alack! he’s an Osiris[*] now, the body—­and to think of it, but an hour ago he was an everyday mortal like you or me!  Well, away with him to the embalmers.  He’ll soon swell in the sun and burst, and that will save them the trouble of cutting him open.  Not that they will spend a talent of silver over him anyway.  Seventy days in natron—­that’s all he’s likely to get. La! la! how my tongue does run, and it’s getting dark.  Come, aren’t you going to take away the body of that poor lad, and the lion, too?  There, my boy, you keep those herbs on, and you’ll never feel your scratches.  I know a thing or two for all I’m crazy, and you, my own grandson!  Dear, dear, I’m glad his Holiness the High Priest adopted you when Pharaoh—­Osiris bless his holy name—­made an end of his son; you look so bonny.  I warrant the real Harmachis could not have killed a lion like that.  Give me the common blood, I say—­it’s so lusty.”