The needs of the court were satisfied bountifully. Three favorites of the viceroy received new robes, a number of special perfumes, and female slaves of various colors. The servants had abundance of food and wine, the pharaoh's laborers received arrears of pay, unusual rations were issued to the army.

The court was delighted, the more since Tutmosis and other n.o.ble youths, at the command of Hiram, received rather large loans, while the nomarch of Habu and his higher officials received costly presents.

So feast followed feast and amus.e.m.e.nt amus.e.m.e.nt, though the heat increased always. Seeing this general delight, the viceroy was satisfied. He was troubled, however, by the bearing of Mefres and other priests. Rameses thought that those dignitaries would reproach him for having become so indebted to Hiram in spite of those lessons which he had received in the temple. Meanwhile the holy fathers were silent and did not even show themselves.

"What does this mean?" asked the prince one day of Tutmosis; "the priests do not reproach us? We have never indulged in such excesses before. Music is sounding from morning till evening; we drink, beginning with sunrise, and we fall asleep with women in our arms or pitchers at our heads."

"Why should they reproach us?" answered the indignant Tutmosis. "Are we not sojourning in the city of Astarte,[16] for whom amus.e.m.e.nt is the most pleasing service, and love the most coveted sacrifice?

Moreover the priests understand that after such privations and fasts rest is due thee."

[16] Astaroth.

"Have they said anything?" asked the prince, with disquiet.

"Yes, more than once. Only yesterday the holy Mefres smiled, and said that amus.e.m.e.nt attracted a young man like thee more than religion or the labor of ruling a state."

Rameses fell to thinking,--

"So the priests looked on him as a frivolous stripling, though he, thanks to Sarah, would become a father to-day or to-morrow. But they would have a surprise when he spoke to them in his own manner."

In truth the prince reproached himself somewhat. From the time that he left the temple of Hator he had not occupied himself one day with the affairs of Habu. The priests might suppose that he was either entirely satisfied with Pentuer's explanations, or that he was tired of interfering in government.

"So much the better!" whispered he. "So much the better!"

Under the influence of the endless intrigues of those around him, or suspicious of those intrigues, the instinct to deceive began in his young spirit to rouse itself. Rameses felt that the priests did not divine the subject of his conversation with Hiram, nor the plans which were forming in his head. It sufficed those blinded persons, that he was amusing himself; from this they inferred that the management of the state would remain in their hands forever.

"Have the G.o.ds so darkened their minds," thought Rameses, "that they do not even ask themselves why Hiram gave me a loan so considerable?

And perhaps that crafty Tyrian has been able to lull their suspicious hearts? So much the better! So much the better!"

He had a marvellously agreeable feeling when he thought that the priests had blundered. He determined to keep them in that blunder for the future; hence he amused himself madly.

Indeed the priests were mistaken, both in Rameses and Hiram. The artful Tyrian gave himself out before them as very proud of his relations with Rameses, and the prince with no less success played the role of a riotous stripling.

Mefres was even convinced that the prince was thinking seriously of expelling the Phnicians, that meanwhile he and his courtiers were contracting debts and would never pay them.

But the temple of Astaroth with its numerous courts and gardens was filled with devotees all the time. Every day, if not every hour, though the heat was excessive, some company of pilgrims to the great G.o.ddess arrived from the depth of Asia.

Those were strange pilgrims. Wearied, streaming with perspiration, covered with dust, they advanced with music, and dancing, and songs sometimes of a very lewd character. The day pa.s.sed for them in unbridled license in honor of the G.o.ddess. It was possible not only to recognize every such company from afar, but to catch its odor, since those people always brought immense bouquets of fresh flowers in their hands, and in bundles all the male cats that had died in the course of the current year. The devotees gave these cats to dissectors in Pi-Bast to be stuffed or embalmed, and bore them home later on as valued relics.

On the first day of the month Mesori (May-June), Prince Hiram informed Rameses that he might appear at the temple of Astaroth that evening.

When it had grown dark on the streets after sunset, the viceroy girded a short sword to his side, put on a mantle with a hood, and un.o.bserved by any servant, slipped away to the house of Hiram.

The old magnate was waiting for the viceroy.

"Well," said he, with a smile, "art thou not afraid, prince, to enter a Phnician temple where cruelty sits on the altar and perversity ministers?"

"Fear?" repeated Rameses, looking at him almost contemptuously.

"Astaroth is not Baal, nor am I a child which they might throw into your G.o.d's red-hot belly."

"But does the prince believe this story?"

Rameses shrugged his shoulders.

"An eyewitness and a trustworthy person," answered he, "told me how ye sacrifice children. Once a storm wrecked a number of tens of your vessels. Immediately the Tyrian priests announced a religious ceremony at which throngs of people collected." The prince spoke with evident indignation. "Before the temple of Baal situated on a lofty place was an immense bronze statue with the head of a bull. Its belly was red hot. At command of your priests the foolish Phnician mothers put their most beautiful children at the feet of this cruel divinity--"

"Only boys," interrupted Hiram.

"Only boys," continued Rameses. "The priests sprinkled each boy with perfumes, decked him with flowers, and then the statue seized him with bronze hands, opened its jaws, and devoured the child, whose screams meanwhile were heaven-piercing. Flames burst each time from the mouth of the deity."

Hiram laughed in silence.

"And dost thou believe this, worthiness?"

"I repeat what a man told me who has never lied."

"He told what he saw. But did it not surprise him that no mother whose children they burned was weeping?"

"He was astonished, indeed, at such indifference in women, since they are always ready to shed tears even over a dead hen. But it shows great cruelty in your people."

The old Phnician nodded.

"Was that long ago?" asked he.

"A few years."

"Well," said Hiram, deliberately, "shouldst thou wish to visit Tyre some day, I shall have the honor to show thee a solemnity like that one."

"I have no wish to see it."

"After the ceremony we shall go to another court of the temple, where the prince will see a very fine school, and in it, healthy and gladsome, those very same boys who were burnt a few years ago."

"How is that?" exclaimed Rameses; "then did they not perish?"

"They are living, and growing up to be st.u.r.dy mariners. When thou shall be pharaoh,--mayst thou live through eternity!--perhaps more than one of them will be sailing thy ships."

"Then ye deceive your people?" laughed the prince.

"We deceive no one," answered the Tyrian, with dignity. "Each man deceives himself when he does not seek the explanation of a solemnity which he does not understand."

"I am curious," said Rameses.

"In fact," continued Hiram, "we have a custom that indigent mothers wishing to a.s.sure their sons a good career give them to the service of the state. In reality, those children are taken across the statue of Baal, in which there is a heated stove. This ceremony does not mean that the children are really burnt, but that they have been given to the temple, and so are as much lost to their mothers as if they had fallen into fire.

"In truth, however, they do not go to the stove, but to nurses and women who rear them for some years. When they have grown up sufficiently, the school of priests of Baal receives and educates them. The most competent become priests or officials; the less gifted go to the navy and obtain great wealth frequently. Now I think the prince will not wonder that Tyrian mothers do not mourn for their children. I will say more: thou wilt understand, lord, why there is no punishment for parents who kill their children, as there is in Egypt."

"Wretches are found in all lands," replied the prince.

"But there is no child murder in our country," continued Hiram, "for with us children, when their mothers are unable to support them, are taken to the temple by the state."