To the king’s right, beside the dais, with a hand resting on the back of a cathedra, or great chair, was the crown prince, Rameses.  The old courtiers of the dead grandsire, visiting the court of Meneptah, flung up their hands and gasped when they beheld the heir to the double crown of Egypt.  They looked upon the old Pharaoh, renewed in youth and strength.  There were the same narrow temples with the sloping brow, the same hawked nose, the same full lips, the same heavy eye with the smoldering ember in its dusky depths.  The only radical dissimilarity was the hue of the prince’s complexion.  It was a strange, un-Egyptian pallor, an opaque whiteness with dark shadows that belied the testimony of vigor in his sinewy frame.

The old courtiers that were still attached to the court of Meneptah watched with fascination the development of the heir’s character.  He was twenty-two years old now and had proved that no alien nature had been housed in the old Pharaoh’s shape.  If any pointed out the prince’s indolence as proving him unlike his grandsire the old courtiers shook their heads and said:  “He does not reign as yet and he but saves his forces till the crown is his.”  So Egypt, stagnated at the pinnacle of power by the accession of Meneptah, began to look forward secretly to the reign of Rameses the Younger, with a hope that was half terror.

To-night he stood in semi-dusk robed in festal attire, for somewhere a rout awaited him.  And of the groups of power and rank about him, none seemed to fit that majestic council chamber so well as he.  It was not the robe of costly stuffs he wore, nor the trappings of jewels, which if he moved never so slightly emitted a shower of frosty sparks—­but a peculiar emanation of magnetism that at once repelled and attracted, and made him master over the monarch himself.  He had never met repulse or defeat; he had never entered the presence of his peer; he had never loved, he had never prayed.  He was a solitary power, who admitted death as his only equal, and defied even him.

The other counselors were minor members of the cabinet, who had been summoned, but expected only to hear and keep silence while the great powers—­the king, the prince, the priest and the fan-bearer—­conferred.

Loi entered, bowing and walking with palsied step.  At one time the three central figures of the hall had been his pupils.  He had taught them from the simplest hieratic catechism to the initiation into the mysteries.  As novices they had kissed his hand and borne him reverence.  Now as the initiated, exalted through the acquisition of power, it lay with them to reverse conditions if they pleased.  But as the old prelate prepared to do obeisance before Meneptah, he was stayed with a gesture, and after a word of greeting was dismissed to his place.  Rameses saluted him with a motion of his hand and Har-hat bowed reverently.  The pontiff backed away to the great council table set opposite the throne and was met there by a courtier with a chair.