“To help me,” replied the dwarf, half in entreaty, and half in reproach.  “You deprived me of my growth, and reduced me to a cripple.”

“Because no one is better off than you dwarfs,” interrupted the witch.

Nemu shook his head, and answered sadly—­

“You have often said so—­and perhaps for many others, who are born in misery like me—­perhaps-you are right; but for me—­you have spoilt my life; you have crippled not my body only but my soul, and have condemned me to sufferings that are nameless and unutterable.”

The dwarf’s big head sank on his breast, and with his left hand he pressed his heart.

The old woman went up to him kindly.

“What ails you?” she asked, “I thought it was well with you in Mena’s house.”

“You thought so?” cried the dwarf.  “You who show me as in a mirror what I am, and how mysterious powers throng and stir in me?  You made me what I am by your arts; you sold me to the treasurer of Rameses, and he gave me to the father of Mena, his brother-in-law.  Fifteen years ago!  I was a young man then, a youth like any other, only more passionate, more restless, and fiery than they.  I was given as a plaything to the young Mena, and he harnessed me to his little chariot, and dressed me out with ribbons and feathers, and flogged me when I did not go fast enough.  How the girl—­for whom I would have given my life—­the porter’s daughter, laughed when I, dressed up in motley, hopped panting in front of the chariot and the young lord’s whip whistled in my ears wringing the sweat from my brow, and the blood from my broken heart.  Then Mena’s father died, the boy, went to school, and I waited on the wife of his steward, whom Katuti banished to Hermonthis.  That was a time!  The little daughter of the house made a doll of me,

     [Dolls belonging to the time of the Pharaohs are preserved in the
     museums, for instance, the jointed ones at Leyden.]

laid me in the cradle, and made me shut my eyes and pretend to sleep, while love and hatred, and great projects were strong within me.  If I tried to resist they beat me with rods; and when once, in a rage, I forgot myself, and hit little Mertitefs hard, Mena, who came in, hung me up in the store-room to a nail by my girdle, and left me to swing there; he said he had forgotten to take me down again.  The rats fell upon me; here are the scars, these little white spots here—­look!  They perhaps will some day wear out, but the wounds that my spirit received in those hours have not yet ceased to bleed.  Then Mena married Nefert, and, with her, his mother-in-law, Katuti, came into the house.  She took me from the steward, I became indispensable to her; she treats me like a man, she values my intelligence and listens to my advice,—­therefore I will make her great, and with her, and through her, I will wax mighty.  If Ani mounts the throne, we wilt guide him—­you, and I, and she!  Rameses must fall, and with him Mena, the boy who degraded my body and poisoned my soul!”