“Changed!” said Abi, letting him go.  “Who would not be changed who suffers as I do ever since I listened to your cursed counsel, and tried to climb into the seat of Pharaoh?  Before that I was happy.  I had my sons, I had my wives, as many as I wished.  I had my revenues and armies.  Now everything has gone.  My sons are dead, my women are driven away, my revenues are taken from me, my armies serve another.”

“At least,” suggested Kaku, “you are Pharaoh, and the husband of the most beautiful and the wisest woman in the world.”

“Pharaoh!” groaned Abi.  “The humblest mummy in the common city vaults is a greater king than I am, and as for the rest——­” and he stopped and groaned again.

“What is the matter with your Majesty?” asked Kaku.

“The matter is that I have fallen under the influence of an evil planet.”

“The Star of Amen,” suggested the astrologer.

“Yes, the Star of Amen, that lovely Terror whom you call my wife.  Man, she is no wife to me.  Listen—­there in the harem I went into the chamber where she was, none forbidding me, and found her sitting before her mirror and singing, clothed only in a thin robe of white, and her dark hair—­O Kaku, never did you see such hair—­which fell almost to the ground.  She smiled on me, she spoke me fair, she drew me with those glittering eyes of hers—­yes, she even called me husband, and sighed and talked of love, till at length I drew near to her and threw my arms about her.”

“And then——­”

“And then, Kaku, she was gone, and where her sweet face should have been I saw the yellow, mummied head of Pharaoh, he who is with Osiris, that seemed to grin at me.  I opened my arms again, and lo! there she sat, laughing and shaking perfume from her hair, asking me, too, what ailed me that I turned so white, and if such were the way of husbands?

“Well, that was nigh a month ago, and as it began, so it has gone on.  I seek my wife, and I find the mummied head of Pharaoh, and all the while she mocks me.  Nor may I see the others any more, for she has caused them to be hunted hence, even those who have dwelt with me for years, saying that she must rule alone.”

“Is that all?” asked Kaku.

“No, indeed, for as she torments me, so she torments every other man who comes near to her.  She nets them with smiles, she bewitches them with her eyes till they go mad for love of her, and then, still smiling, she sends them about their business.  Already two of them who were leaders in the great plot have died by their own hands, and another is mad, while the rest have become my secret but my bitter foes, because they love my Queen and think that I stand between her and them.”

“Is that all?” asked Kaku again.

“No, not all, for my power is taken from me.  I who was great, after Pharaoh the greatest in all the land, now am but a slave.  From morning to night I must work at tasks I hate; I must build temples to Amen, I must dig canals, I must truckle to the common herd, and redress their grievances and remit their taxes.  More, I must chastise the Bedouin who have ever been my friends, and—­next month undertake a war against that King of Khita, with whom I made a secret treaty, and whose daughter that I married has been sent back to him because I loved her.”