The Regent had changed color several times while reading this letter. Now he laid it on the table with a shrug of his shoulders, stood up, clasped his hand behind him, and, with his eyes cast meditatively on the floor, leaned against one of the pillars which supported the beams of the roof.
The longer he thought, the less amiable his expression became. "A pill sweetened with honey, [Two recipes for pills are found in the papyri, one with honey for women, and one without for men.] such as they give to women," he muttered to himself. Then he went back to the table, read the king's letter through once more, and said: "One may learn from it how to deny by granting, and at the same time not to forget to give it a brilliant show of magnanimity. Rameses knows his daughter. She is a girl like any other, and will take good care not to choose a man twice as old as herself, and who might be her father. Rameses will 'submit'--I am to I submit!' And to what? to the judgment and the choice of a wilful child!"
With these words he threw the letter so vehemently on to the table, that it slipped off on to the floor.
The mute slave picked it up, and laid it carefully on the table again, while his master threw a ball into a silver bason.
Several attendants rushed into the room, and Ani ordered them to bring to him the captive dwarf of the Lady Katuti. His soul rose in indignation against the king, who in his remote camp-tent could fancy he had made him happy by a proof of his highest favor. When we are plotting against a man we are inclined to regard him as an enemy, and if he offers us a rose we believe it to be for the sake, not of the perfume, but of the thorns.
The dwarf Nemu was brought before the Regent and threw himself on the ground at his feet.
Ani ordered the attendants to leave him, and said to the little man "You compelled me to put you in prison. Stand up!" The dwarf rose and said, "Be thanked--for my arrest too."
The Regent looked at him in astonishment; but Nemu went on half humbly, half in fun, "I feared for my life, but thou hast not only not shortened it, but hast prolonged it; for in the solitude of the dungeon time seemed long, and the minutes grown to hours."
"Keep your wit for the ladies," replied the Regent. "Did I not know that you meant well, and acted in accordance with the Lady Katuti's fancy, I would send you to the quarries."