Libyan mountains), and had seen from a distance that which I have set
down. Now, when she was come, she knew me for Harmachis, and, bending
herself, she made obeisance to me, and saluted me, calling me Royal, and
worthy of all honour, and beloved, and chosen of the Holy Three, ay, and
by the name of the Pharaoh! the Deliverer!

But I, thinking that terror had made her sick of mind, asked her of what
she would speak.

"Is it a great thing," I asked, "that I should slay a lion? Is it a
matter worthy of such talk as thine? There live, and have lived, men who
have slain many lions. Did not the Divine Amen-hetep the Osirian slay
with his own hand more than a hundred lions? Is it not written on the
scarabæus that hangs within my father's chamber, that he slew lions
aforetime? And have not others done likewise? Why then, speakest thou
thus, O foolish woman?"

All of which I said, because, having now slain the lion, I was minded,
after the manner of youth, to hold it as a thing of no account. But she
did not cease to make obeisance, and to call me by names that are too
high to be written.

"O Royal One," she cried, "wisely did thy mother prophecy. Surely the
Holy Spirit, the Knepth, was in her, O thou conceived by a God! See the
omen. The lion there--he growls within the Capitol at Rome--and the dead
man, he is the Ptolemy--the Macedonian spawn that, like a foreign weed,
hath overgrown the land of Nile; with the Macedonian Lagidæ thou shalt
go to smite the lion of Rome. But the Macedonian cur shall fly, and the
Roman lion shall strike him down, and thou shalt strike down the lion,
and the land of Khem shall once more be free! free! Keep thyself but