I shall try and weave their adventures into a single fabric, which will
look like one of those marvelous rugs of which you read in the tales
which Scheherazade told to Harun the Just.



THE KEY OF STONE

Fifty years before the birth of Christ, the Romans conquered the land
along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and among this newly
acquired territory was a country called Egypt.

The Romans, who are to play such a great role in our history, were a
race of practical men.

They built bridges, they constructed roads, and with a small but highly
trained army of soldiers and civil officers, they managed to rule the
greater part of Europe, of eastern Africa and western Asia.

As for art and the sciences, these did not interest them very much. They
regarded with suspicion a man who could play the lute or who could write
a poem about Spring and only thought him little better than the clever
fellow who could walk the tightrope or who had trained his poodle dog to
stand on its hind legs. They left such things to the Greeks and to the
Orientals, both of whom they despised, while they themselves spent their
days and nights keeping order among the thousand and one nations of
their vast empire.

When they first set foot in Egypt that country was already terribly old.