For this was the manner of my life.  I rose early, I attended the worship of the Temple, and I gave my days to study.  I learnt of the rites of religion and their meaning, and of the beginning of the Gods and the beginning of the Upper World.  I learnt of the mystery of the movements of the stars, and of how the earth rolls on among them.  I was instructed in that ancient knowledge which is called magic, and in the way of interpretation of dreams, and of the drawing nigh to God.  I was taught the language of symbols and their outer and inner secrets.  I became acquainted with the eternal laws of Good and Evil, and with the mystery of that trust which is held of man; also I learnt the secrets of the pyramids—­which I would that I had never known.  Further, I read the records of the past, and of the acts and words of the ancient kings who were before me since the rule of Horus upon earth; and I was made to know all craft of state, the lore of earth, and with it the history of Greece and Rome.  Also I learnt the Grecian and Roman tongues, of which indeed I already had some knowledge—­and all this while, for five long years, I kept my hands clean and my heart pure, and did no evil in the sight of God or man; but laboured heavily to acquire all things, and to prepare myself for the destiny that awaited me.

Twice every year greetings and letters came from my father Amenemhat, and twice every year I sent back my answers asking if the time had come to cease from labour.  And so the days of my probation sped away till I grew faint and weary at heart, for being now a man, ay and learned, I longed to make a beginning of the life of men.  And often I wondered if this talk and prophecy of the things that were to be was but a dream born of the brains of men whose wish ran before their thought.  I was, indeed, of the Royal blood, that I knew:  for my uncle, Sepa the Priest, showed me a secret record of the descent, traced without break from father to son, and graven in mystic symbols on a tablet of the stone of Syene.  But of what avail was it to be Royal by right when Egypt, my heritage, was a slave—­a slave to do the pleasure and minister to the luxury of the Macedonian Lagidae—­ay, and when she had been so long a serf that, perchance, she had forgotten how to put off the servile smile of Bondage and once more to look across the world with Freedom’s happy eyes?

Then I bethought me of my prayer upon the pylon tower of Abouthis and of the answer given to my prayer, and wondered if that, too, were a dream.

And one night, as, weary with study, I walked within the sacred grove that is in the garden of the temple, and mused thus, I met my uncle Sepa, who also was walking and thinking.

“Hold!” he cried in his great voice; “why is thy face so sad, Harmachis?  Has the last problem that we studied overwhelmed thee?”

“Nay, my uncle,” I answered, “I am overwhelmed indeed, but not of the problem; it was a light one.  My heart is heavy, for I am weary of life within these cloisters, and the piled-up weight of knowledge crushes me.  It is of no avail to store up force which cannot be used.”