Afterwards Mermes married Asti, but like Pharaoh for a long while he remained childless, since he took no other wives.  On the day of the birth of the Princess Tua, the Morning Star of Amen, however, Asti bore a son, a royal-looking child of great strength and beauty and very fair in colour, as tradition said that the kings of his race had been before him, but with black and shining eyes.

“See,” said the midwife, “here is a head shaped to wear a crown.”

Whereon Asti, his mother, forgetting her caution in her joy, or perhaps inspired by the gods, for from her childhood she was a prophetess, answered,

“Yes, and I think that this head and a crown will come close together,” and she kissed him and named him Rames after her royal forefather, the founder of their line.

As it chanced a spy overheard this saying and reported it to the Council, and the Council urged Pharaoh to cause the boy to be put away, as they had urged in the case of his father, Mermes, because of the words of omen that Asti had spoken, and because she had given her son a royal name, naming him after the majesty of Ra, as though he were indeed the child of a king.  But Pharaoh would not, asking with his soft smile whether they wished him to baptise his daughter in the blood of another infant who drew his first breath upon the same day, and adding: 

“Ra sheds his glory upon all, and this high-born boy may live to be a friend in need to her whom Amen has given to Egypt.  Let things befall as the gods decree.  Who am I that I should make myself a god and destroy a life that they have fashioned?”

So the boy Rames lived and throve, and Mermes and Asti, when they came to hear of these things, thanked Pharaoh and blessed him.

Now the house of Mermes, as Captain of the Guard, was within the wall of the great temple of Amen, near to the palace of the priestesses of Amen where the Princess Neter-Tua was nurtured.  Thus it came about that when the Queen Ahura died, the lady Asti was named as nurse to the Princess, since Pharaoh said that she should drink no milk save that of one in whose veins ran royal blood.  So Asti was Tua’s foster mother, and night by night she slept in her arms together with her own son, Rames.  Afterwards, too, when they were weaned the babes were taught to walk and speak together, and later, as children, they became playmates.

Thus from the first these two loved each other, as brother and sister love when they are twins.  But although the boy was bold and brave, this little princess always had the mastery of him, not because she was a princess and heir to the throne of Egypt—­for all the high titles they gave her fell idly on her ears, nor did she think anything of the bowings of courtiers and of priests—­but from some strength within herself.  She it was that set the games they played, and when she talked he was obliged to listen, for although she was so sound and healthy, this Tua differed from other children.