Bai, the second prophet of Amon, who acted as the representative of the
aged and feeble chief-prophet and high-priest Rui, went into the holy of
holies, the throng of inferior servants of the divinity pursued their
various duties, and the frenzied mob rushed through the streets of the
city towards the distant Hebrew quarter.
As the flood, pouring into the valley, sweeps everything before it, the
people, rushing to seek vengeance, forced every one they met to join
them. No Egyptian from whom death had snatched a loved one failed to
follow the swelling torrent, which increased till hundreds became
thousands. Men, women, and children, freedmen and slaves, winged by the
ardent longing to bring death and destruction on the hated Hebrews,
darted to the remote quarter where they dwelt.
How the workman had grasped a hatchet, the housewife an axe, they
themselves scarcely knew. They were dashing forward to deal death and
ruin and had had no occasion to search for weapons--they had been close
at hand.
The first to feel the weight of their vengeance must be Nun, an aged
Hebrew, rich in herds, loved and esteemed by many an Egyptian whom he had
benefitted--but when hate and revenge speak, gratitude shrinks timidly
into the background.
His property, like the houses and hovels of his people, was in the
strangers' quarter, west of Tanis, and lay nearest to the streets
inhabited by the Egyptians themselves.
Usually at this hour herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were being
watered or driven to pasture and the great yard before his house was
filled with cattle, servants of both sexes, carts, and agricultural
implements. The owner usually overlooked the departure of the flocks and
herds, and the mob had marked him and his family for the first victims of
their fury.
The swiftest of the avengers had now reached his extensive farm-
buildings, among them Hornecht, captain of the archers, brother-in-law of
the old astrologer. House and barns were brightly illumined by the first
light of the young day. A stalwart smith kicked violently on the stout
door; but the unbolted sides yielded so easily that he was forced to
cling to the door-post to save himself from falling. Others, Hornecht
among them, pressed past him into the yard. What did this mean?
Had some new spell been displayed to attest the power of the Hebrew
leader Mesu, who had brought such terrible plagues on the land,--and of
his God.
The yard was absolutely empty. The stalls contained a few dead cattle
and sheep, killed because they had been crippled in some way, while a
lame lamb limped off at sight of the mob. The carts and wagons, too, had
vanished. The lowing, bleating throng which the priests had imagined to
be the souls of the damned was the Hebrew host, departing by night from
their old home with all their flocks under the guidance of Moses.
The captain of the archers dropped his sword, and a spectator might have
believed that the sight was a pleasant surprise to him; but his neighbor,
a clerk from the king's treasure-house, gazed around the empty space with
the disappointed air of a man who has been defrauded.
The flood of schemes and passions, which had surged so high during the
night, ebbed under the clear light of day. Even the soldier's quickly
awakened wrath had long since subsided into composure. The populace
might have wreaked their utmost fury on the other Hebrews, but not upon
Nun, whose son, Hosea, had been his comrade in arms, one of the most
distinguished leaders in the army, and an intimate family friend. Had he
thought of him and foreseen that his father's dwelling would be first
attacked, he would never have headed the mob in their pursuit of
vengeance; nay, he bitterly repented having forgotten the deliberate
judgment which befitted his years.
While many of the throng began to plunder and destroy Nun's deserted
home, men and women came to report that not a soul was to be found in any
of the neighboring dwellings. Others told of cats cowering on the
deserted hearthstones, of slaughtered cattle and shattered furniture; but
at last the furious avengers dragged out a Hebrew with his family and a
half-witted grey-haired woman found hidden among some straw. The crone,
amid imbecile laughter, said her people had made themselves hoarse
calling her, but Meliela was too wise to walk on and on as they meant
to do; besides her feet were too tender, and she had not even a pair of
shoes.
The man, a frightfully ugly Jew, whom few of his own race would have
pitied, protested, sometimes with a humility akin to fawning, sometimes
with the insolence which was a trait of his character, that he had
nothing to do with the god of lies in whose name the seducer Moses had
led away his people to ruin; he himself, his wife, and his child had
always been on friendly terms with the Egyptians. Indeed, many knew him,
he was a money-lender and when the rest of his nation had set forth on
their pilgrimage, be had concealed himself, hoping to pursue his
dishonest calling and sustain no loss.
Some of his debtors, however, were among the infuriated populace, though
even without their presence he was a doomed man; for he was the first
person on whom the excited mob could show that they were resolved upon
revenge. Rushing upon him with savage yells, the lifeless bodies of the
luckless wretch and his family were soon strewn over the ground. Nobody
knew who had done this first bloody deed; too many had dashed forward at
once.
Not a few others who had remained in the houses and huts also fell
victims to the people's thirst for vengeance, though many had time to
escape, and while streams of blood were flowing, axes were wielded, and
walls and doors were battered down with beams and posts to efface the
abodes of the detested race from the earth.
The burning embers brought by some frantic women were extinguished and
trampled out; the more prudent warned them of the peril that would menace
their own homes and the whole city of Tanis, if the strangers' quarter
should be fired.
So the Hebrews' dwellings escaped the flames; but as the sun mounted
higher dense clouds of white dust shrouded the abodes they had forsaken,
and where, only yesterday, thousands of people had possessed happy homes
and numerous herds had quenched their thirst in fresh waters, the glowing
soil was covered with rubbish and stone, shattered beams, and broken
woodwork. Dogs and cats left behind by their owners wandered among the
ruins and were joined by women and children who lived in the beggars'
hovels on the edge of the necropolis close by, and now, holding their
hands over their mouths, searched amid the stifling dust and rubbish for
any household utensil or food which might have been left by the fugitives
and overlooked by the mob.
During the afternoon Fai, the second prophet of Amon, was carried past
the ruined quarter. He did not come to gloat over the spectacle of
destruction, it was his nearest way from the necropolis to his home.
Yet a satisfied smile hovered around his stern mouth as he noticed how
thoroughly the people had performed their work. His own purpose, it is
true, had not been fulfilled, the leader of the fugitives had escaped
their vengeance, but hate, though never sated, can yet be gratified.
Even the smallest pangs of an enemy are a satisfaction, and the priest
had just come from the grieving Pharaoh. He had not succeeded in
releasing him entirely from the bonds of the Hebrew magician, but he had
loosened them.
The resolute, ambitious man, by no means wont to hold converse with
himself, had repeated over and over again, while sitting alone in the
sanctuary reflecting on what had occurred and what yet remained to be
done, these little words, and the words were: "Bless me too!"
Pharaoh had uttered them, and the entreaty had been addressed neither to
old Rui, the chief priest, nor to himself, the only persons who could
possess the privilege of blessing the monarch, nay--but to the most
atrocious wretch that breathed, to the foreigner the Hebrew, Mesu, whom
he hated more than any other man on earth.
"Bless me too!" The pious entreaty, which wells so trustingly from the
human heart in the hour of anguish, had pierced his soul like a dagger.
It had seemed as if such a petition, uttered by the royal lips to such a
man, had broken the crozier in the hand of the whole body of Egyptian
priests, stripped the panther-skin from their shoulders, and branded with
shame the whole people whom he loved.
He knew full well that Moses was one of the wisest sages who had ever
graduated from the Egyptian schools, knew that Pharaoh was completely
under the thrall of this man who had grown up in the royal household and
been a friend of his father Rameses the Great. He had seen the monarch
pardon deeds committed by Moses which would have cost the life of any
other mortal, though he were the highest noble in the land--and what must
the Hebrew be to Pharaoh, the sun-god incarnate on the throne of the
world, when standing by the death-bed of his own son, he could yield to
the impulse to uplift his hands to him and cry "Bless me too!"
He had told himself all these things, maturely considered them, yet he
would not yield to the might of the strangers. The destruction of this
man and all his race was in his eyes the holiest, most urgent duty--to
accomplish which he would not shrink even from assailing the throne.
Nay, in his eyes Pharaoh Menephtah's shameful entreaty: "Bless me too!"
had deprived him of all the rights of sovereignty.
Moses had murdered Pharaoh's first-born son, but he and the aged chief-
priest of Amon held the weal or woe of the dead prince's soul in their
hands,--a weapon sharp and strong, for he knew the monarch's weak and
vacillating heart. If the high-priest of Amon--the only man whose
authority surpassed his own--did not thwart him by some of the
unaccountable whims of age, it would be the merest trifle to force
Pharaoh to yield; but any concession made to-day would be withdrawn
to-morrow, should the Hebrew succeed in coming between the irresolute
monarch and his Egyptian advisers. This very day the unworthy son of the
great Rameses had covered his face and trembled like a timid fawn at the
bare mention of the sorcerer's name, and to-morrow he might curse him and
pronounce a death sentence upon him. Perhaps he might be induced to do
this, and on the following one he would recall him and again sue for his
blessing.
Down with such monarchs! Let the feeble reed on the throne be hurled
into the dust! Already he had chosen a successor from among the princes
of the blood, and when the time was ripe--when Rui, the high-priest of
Amon, had passed the limits of life decreed by the gods to mortals and
closed his eyes in death, he, Bai, would occupy his place, a new life
for Egypt, and Moses and his race would commence would perish.
While the prophet was absorbed in these reflections a pair of ravens
fluttered around his head and, croaking loudly, alighted on the dusty
ruins of one of the shattered houses. He involuntarily glanced around
him and noted that they had perched on the corpse of a murdered Hebrew,
lying half concealed amid the rubbish. A smile which the priests of
lower rank who surrounded his litter knew not how to interpret, flitted
over his shrewd, defiant countenance.