Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/101

Rh was on the point of death. On the breast of the monarch, before whose voice millions had trembled for half a century, had fallen a stifling phantom which was draining the blood from his heart, the strength from his arms, and, at intervals, even the consciousness from his brain. Like a fallen cedar the great Pharaoh lay upon the skin of an Indian tiger, his feet covered with the triumphal robe of the King of Ethiopia. And stern even to himself, he summoned the wisest physician from the temple at Carnac, and said:

"I know that thou art acquainted with potent mmedicines, which either slay or heal forthwith. Prepare one of them meet for my sickness, and let me end at once thus or otherwise."

The physician hesitated.

"Consider, O Rameses," he whispered, "that from the moment of thy descending out of the high heavens, the Nile has ebbed a hundred times; can I then administer to thee a medicine, uncertain even for the youngest among thy warriors?"

Rameses raised himself to a sitting posture upon his couch.

"It must needs be that my sickness is great," he exclaimed, "since thou, O priest, makest bold to bestow counsels upon me! Be silent and fulfil what I have commanded. For Horus, my thirty-year-old grandson and successor, is yet alive; Egypt can have no other ruler, if he ascend not the chariot and raise not the spear." 7