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On the sixteenth of Mesore the staff of Prince Ramses, together with his dignity the minister, passed the night under the open sky at the distance of five miles from the regiments which were arranged in battle order across the highway beyond the city of Pi-Bailos. In that early morning which precedes our six o'clock, the hills grew violet, and from behind them came forth the sun.
"I am Eunana, a centurion in the regiment of Isis. The unfortunate Eunana. Dost Thou not remember me, worthiness? More than a year ago at the maneuvers near Pi-Bailos I discovered the sacred scarabs." "Ah, that is thou!" interrupted Tutmosis. "But thy regiment is not in Abydos?" "The water of truth flows from thy lips.
All remembered how easily in the past year he had rushed from maneuvers at Pi-Bailos to Sarah's quiet country villa, and how from feasts he had grown impassioned, recently, for administrative labor, and then devotion, to return to feasts afterward.
The regiments of Prince Ramses, which were to meet the Asiatic forces of Nitager, had assembled on the road above the city of Pi-Bailos with their camp and with some military engines. The heir himself directed all the movements. He had organized two parties of scouts.
"Dost Thou remember, Tutmosis, the maneuvers at Pi-Bailos? Two years have passed. When I was angry then at the insolence and greed of the priests, couldst Thou think that I should reckon with them so early? But poor Sarah and my little son. How beautiful he was!" Two tears rolled down the pharaoh's cheeks.
"In the regiments which them didst concentrate near Pi-Bailos thirty men died from over-exertion, and several hundred are sick." The prince dropped his head. "Ramses," continued the pharaoh, "through thy lips is speaking not a dignitary of the state who is thinking of the soundness of canals and the lives of laborers, but an angry person.
"Whence hast Thou come, that thy main forces are in front of our army?" "I knew how incompetently the division was marching from Memphis, when the heir was concentrating his regiments near Pi-Bailos, and for sport I wished to capture you young lords. To my misfortune the heir was here and spoiled my plans. Act that way always, Ramses, of course in presence of real enemies."
"That ravine is five miles long, and comes out again almost in front of Pi-Bailos." "An immense loss of time!" interrupted Ramses, in anger. "I would swear that those are not scarabs, but the spirits of my Phoenician usurers," said Tutmosis the exquisite. "Not being able, because of their death, to receive money from me, they will force me now to march through the desert in punishment!"
The whole of such an oasis was sometimes occupied by one family, which when it met another like itself at the market in Pi-Bailos might not even know that they were neighbors in the desert. On the fifteenth of Mesore the concentration of troops was almost finished.
Ramses commanded his servants to admit no one, and walked in loneliness on the terrace of his villa, thinking, "A wonderful thing! Down there at Pi-Bailos the invincible regiments of Nitager opened before me, while in Memphis an overseer of prisons, an investigating official, and a scribe bar the way to me. What are they?
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