"This miracle might terrify a credulous and ignorant people, but it has
nothing surprising for me. Let Ennana and the wise men come. They will
repeat this enchantment."
The wise men came, led by their chief. Ennana cast a glance on the river
and its purple waves, and saw at once what was the matter.
"Restore things to their primitive condition," he said to Mosche's
companion; "I will repeat your wonder."
Aharon again smote the stream, which at once resumed its natural colour.
Ennana nodded briefly, like an impartial expert who does justice to the
skill of a colleague; he considered the enchantment was well wrought for
one who had not had, like himself, the opportunity of studying wisdom in
the mysterious chambers of the labyrinth, where a very few of the
initiated can alone enter, so trying are the tests which have to be
undergone.
"It is my turn now," he said; and he stretched out over the Nile his rod
engraved with hieroglyphic signs, muttering a few words of a tongue so
old that it had probably ceased to be understood even in the days of
Mene, the first king of Egypt,--a language spoken by sphinxes, with
syllables of granite.
A vast red flood stretched suddenly from one bank to the other, and the
Nile again rolled ensanguined waves to the sea. The twenty-four
magicians saluted the king as if they were about to withdraw.
"Remain," said the Pharaoh.
They resumed their impassible countenances.
"Have you no other proof of your mission than that? My wise men, you
see, imitate your wonders very well."
Without appearing discouraged by the ironical words of the King, Mosche
replied: "In seven days' time, if you have not made up your mind to let
Israel go into the desert to sacrifice to the Lord according to their
rites, I shall return and perform another wonder before you."
At the end of seven days Mosche reappeared. He spoke to his servant
Aharon the words of the Lord:--
"Stretch out thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers,
and over the ponds, and cause the frogs to come up upon the land of
Egypt."
As soon as Aharon had done as he was bidden, millions of frogs emerged
from the canals, the rivers, and the marshes; they covered the fields
and the roads, they hopped upon the steps of the temples and the
palaces, they invaded the sanctuaries and the most secret chambers;
legions of other frogs followed those which had first appeared; they
were found in the houses, in the kneading-troughs, in the ovens, in the
coffers; no one could step anywhere without crushing some. As if moved
by springs, they jumped between peoples' legs, to the right and the
left, forward and backward; as far as the eye could reach, they were
seen rippling, hopping, jumping past one another, for they already
lacked room, and their numbers grew, their ranks became denser, they
formed heaps here and there; innumerable green backs turned the
countryside into a sort of animated green meadow, on which their yellow
eyes shone like flowers. The animals,--horses, asses, goats,--terrified
and startled, fled across the fields, but everywhere came upon the
loathsome swarms.
The Pharaoh, who from the threshold of his palace beheld this rising
tide of frogs with weariness and disgust, crushed as many as he could
with the end of his sceptre and pushed back the others with his curved
sandals, but his labour was lost; more frogs came no one knew whence,
and took the places of the dead, swarming more than they did, croaking
more than they did, more loathsome, more uncomfortable, bolder, showing
the vertebrae on their backs, staring at him with their big, round eyes,
spreading out their webbed feet, wrinkling the white skin of their
throats. The vile animals seemed endowed with intelligence, and they
formed denser shoals around the King than anywhere else.
The swarming flood grew and still grew: on the knees of the colossi, on
the cornices of the palaces, on the backs of the sphinxes, on the
entablatures of the temples, on the shoulders of the gods, on the
pyramidions of the obelisks, the hideous reptiles, with swollen backs
and indrawn feet, had taken up their places. The ibises, which at first
had rejoiced at this unexpected treat, and had lanced them with their
long beaks, now alarmed by this mighty invasion fled to the upper
regions of the sky, snapping their long bills.
Aharon and Mosche triumphed. Ennana, having been summoned, was sunk in
thought; his finger, placed upon his bald brow, his eyes half-closed, he
seemed to be seeking within his memory for a forgotten magic formula.
The Pharaoh, somewhat uneasy, turned towards him. "Well, Ennana, have
you lost your mind by dint of thought? Is this wonder beyond the reach
of your wisdom?"
"In no wise, O King; but when a man is engaged in measuring the infinite
and calculating eternity and in spelling out the incomprehensible, it
may happen that he does not at once recall the odd word which rules
reptiles, makes them live or destroys them. Watch! all this vermin is
about to vanish."
The old magician waved his wand and whispered a few words; in an instant
the fields, the squares, the roads, the quays along the stream, the
streets in the city, the courts of the palaces, the rooms of the houses,
were cleansed of their croaking guests, and restored to their primitive
condition.
The King smiled, proud of the power of his magician.
"It is not enough to have broken the spell of Aharon," said Ennana; "I
shall repeat it."
Ennana waved his wand in the opposite direction and muttered the
contrary formula. Immediately the frogs reappeared in greater numbers
than before, leaping and croaking. In a twinkling the whole land was
covered with them, and then Aharon stretched out his rod, and the
Egyptian magician was unable to dispel the invasion called up by his
enchantment. In vain he spoke the mysterious words, the incantation had
lost its power. The bands of wise men withdrew, pursued by the loathsome
scourge, and the brows of the Pharaoh were bent with anger, but he
hardened his heart and would not grant the prayer of Mosche; his pride
strove to struggle and to fight against the unknown God of Israel.
However, unable to get rid of the terrible reptiles, Pharaoh promised
Mosche, if he would intercede for him with his God, to grant the Hebrews
permission to go into the desert to sacrifice.
The frogs died or returned to the waters, but the Pharaoh hardened his
heart, and in spite of the gentle remonstrances of Tahoser, he did not
keep his promise.
Then was let loose upon Egypt a multitude of scourges and plagues. A
fierce warfare was waged between the wise men and the two Hebrews whose
wonders they reproduced. Mosche changed all the dust in Egypt into lice;
Ennana did the same. Mosche took two handfuls of ashes of the furnace
and sprinkled them toward the heaven in the sight of the Pharaoh, and
immediately they became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and
upon beast among the Egyptians, but not upon the Hebrews.
"Imitate that wonder!" cried the Pharaoh, beside himself with anger, and
as red as if he were standing in front of a fiery furnace, as he
addressed himself to the chief of the wise men.
"It would be useless," replied the old man, in a tone of discouragement.
"The finger of the Unknown is in all this; our vain formulae cannot
prevail against that mysterious power. Submit, and let us return to our
sanctuaries to study this new god, this Lord, who is more powerful than
Ammon Ra, Osiris, and Typhon. The learning of Egypt has been overcome,
the riddle of the sphinx cannot be answered, and the vast mystery of the
great Pyramid covers nothingness only."
As the Pharaoh still refused to let the Hebrews go, all the cattle of
the Egyptians were smitten with death; the Israelites lost not a single
head.
A wind from the south arose and blew all night long, and in the morning
when day dawned, a vast red cloud concealed the whole of the heavens.
Through the dun-coloured fog the sun shone red like a buckler in the
forge, and seemed to have lost its beams. The cloud was different from
other clouds, it was a living cloud; the noise of its wings was heard;
it alighted on the earth, not in the shape of great drops of rain, but
in shoals of rose, yellow, and green grasshoppers, more numerous than
the grains of sand in the Libyan desert. They followed each other in
swarms like the straw blown about by the storm; the air was darkened;
they filled up the ditches, the ravines, the streams; they put out by
their mere mass the fires lighted to destroy them; they struck against
obstacles and then heaped up and overcame them. If a man opened his
mouth, he breathed one in; they found their way into the folds of the
clothing, into the hair, into the nostrils; their dense columns made
chariots turn back; they overthrew the solitary passer-by and soon
covered him. Their formidable army, springing and flying, marched over
Egypt from the Cataracts to the Delta, over an immense breadth of
country, destroying the grass, reducing the trees to the condition of
skeletons, devouring plants to the roots, leaving behind but a bare
earth trodden down like a threshing-floor.
At the request of the Pharaoh Mosche made the scourge cease. An
extremely violent west wind carried all the grasshoppers into the Sea of
Weeds; but the Pharaoh's obstinate heart, harder than brass, porphyry,
or basalt, would not relent.
Hail, a scourge unknown to Egypt, fell from Heaven amid blinding
lightning and deafening thunder, in enormous stones, cutting, bruising,
breaking everything, mowing down the grain as if with a scythe. Then
black, opaque, horrifying darkness, in which lights were extinguished as
in the depths of the airless passages, spread its heavy clouds over the
land of Egypt, so fair, so luminous, so golden under its azure sky,
where the night is clearer than the daytime in other climes. The
terrified people, believing themselves already shrouded in the
impenetrable darkness of the sepulchre, groped their way or sat down by
the propylaea, uttering plaintive cries and tearing their clothes.
One night, a night of terror and of horror, a spectre flew across the
whole of Egypt, entering every house the door of which was not marked
with red, and the first-born of the males died, the son of the Pharaoh
as well as the son of the meanest hind; yet the King, notwithstanding
all these dread signs, would not yield.
He remained within the recesses of his palace, fierce, silent, gazing at
the body of his son stretched out upon the funeral couch with the
jackals' feet, and heedless of the tears of Tahoser which wetted his
hand.
Mosche stood upon the threshold of the room without any one having
introduced him, for all the servants had fled hither and thither; and he
repeated his demand with imperturbable serenity.
"Go," said Pharaoh at last, "and sacrifice unto your God as you please."
Tahoser threw herself on the King's neck, and said to him, "Now I love
you, for you are a man, and not a god of granite."