“So much the better,” said the old woman.  “Uarda would be just the wife for you, she is good and steady, and no one knows—­”

“What?” said Nemu.

“Who her mother was—­for she was not one of us.  She came here from foreign parts, and when she died she left a trinket with strange letters on it.  We must show it to one of the prisoners of war, after you have got her safe; perhaps they could make out the queer inscription.  She comes of a good stock, that I am certain; for Uarda is the very living image of her mother, and as soon as she was born, she looked like the child of a great man.  You smile, you idiot!  Why thousands of infants have been in my hands, and if one was brought to me wrapped in rags I could tell if its parents were noble or base-born.  The shape of the foot shows it—­and other marks.  Uarda may stay where she is, and I will help you.  If anything new occurs let me know.”

CHAPTER XXI.

When Nemu, riding on an ass this time, reached home, he found neither his mistress nor Nefert within.

The former was gone, first to the temple, and then into the town; Nefert, obeying an irresistible impulse, had gone to her royal friend Bent-Anat.

The king’s palace was more like a little town than a house.  The wing in which the Regent resided, and which we have already visited, lay away from the river; while the part of the building which was used by the royal family commanded the Nile.

It offered a splendid, and at the same time a pleasing prospect to the ships which sailed by at its foot, for it stood, not a huge and solitary mass in the midst of the surrounding gardens, but in picturesque groups of various outline.  On each side of a large structure, which contained the state rooms and banqueting hall, three rows of pavilions of different sizes extended in symmetrical order.  They were connected with each other by colonnades, or by little bridges, under which flowed canals, that watered the gardens and gave the palace-grounds the aspect of a town built on islands.

The principal part of the castle of the Pharaohs was constructed of light Nile-mud bricks and elegantly carved woodwork, but the extensive walls which surrounded it were ornamented and fortified with towers, in front of which heavily armed soldiers stood on guard.

The walls and pillars, the galleries and colonnades, even the roofs, blazed in many colored paints, and at every gate stood tall masts, from which red and blue flags fluttered when the king was residing there.  Now they stood up with only their brass spikes, which were intended to intercept and conduct the lightning.—­[ According to an inscription first interpreted by Dumichen.]

To the right of the principal building, and entirely surrounded with thick plantations of trees, stood the houses of the royal ladies, some mirrored in the lake which they surrounded at a greater or less distance.  In this part of the grounds were the king’s storehouses in endless rows, while behind the centre building, in which the Pharaoh resided, stood the barracks for his body guard and the treasuries.  The left wing was occupied by the officers of the household, the innumerable servants and the horses and chariots of the sovereign.