“I will tell thee, that I may find peace—­I do not want, when I die, to be buried unembalmed.  Who knows but perhaps strange things may happen in the other world, and I would not wish to miss them.  I want to see him again down there, even if it were in the seventh limbo of the damned.  Listen to me!  But, before I speak, promise me that whatever I tell thee, thou wilt leave me in peace, and will see that I am embalmed when I am dead.  Else I will not speak.”

Ani bowed consent.

“No-no,” she said.  “I will tell thee what to swear ’If I do not keep my word to Hekt—­who gives the Mohar into my power—­may the Spirits whom she rules, annihilate me before I mount the throne.’  Do not be vexed, my lord—­and say only ‘Yes.’  What I can tell, is worth more than a mere word.”

“Well then—­yes!” cried the Regent, eager for the mighty revelation.

The old woman muttered a few unintelligible words; then she collected herself, stretched out her lean neck, and asked, as she fixed her sparkling eyes on the man before her: 

“Did’st thou ever, when thou wert young, hear of the singer Beki?  Well, look at me, I am she.”

She laughed loud and hoarsely, and drew her tattered robe across her bosom, as if half ashamed of her unpleasing person.

“Ay!” she continued.  “Men find pleasure in grapes by treading them down, and when the must is drunk the skins are thrown on the dung-hill.  Grape-skins, that is what I am—­but you need not look at me so pitifully; I was grapes once, and poor and despised as I am now, no one can take from me what I have had and have been.  Mine has been a life out of a thousand, a complete life, full to overflowing of joy and suffering, of love and hate, of delight, despair, and revenge.  Only to talk of it raises me to a seat by thy throne there.  No, let me be, I am used now to squatting on the ground; but I knew thou wouldst hear me to the end, for once I too was one of you.  Extremes meet in all things—­I know it by experience.  The greatest men will hold out a hand to a beautiful woman, and time was when I could lead you all as with a rope.  Shall I begin at the beginning?  Well—­I seldom am in the mood for it now-a-days.  Fifty years ago I sang a song with this voice of mine; an old crow like me? sing!  But so it was.  My father was a man of rank, the governor of Abydos; when the first Rameses took possession of the throne my father was faithful to the house of thy fathers, so the new king sent us all to the gold mines, and there they all died—­my parents, brothers, and sisters.  I only survived by some miracle.  As I was handsome and sang well, a music master took me into his band, brought me to Thebes, and wherever there was a feast given in any great house, Beki was in request.  Of flowers and money and tender looks I had a plentiful harvest; but I was proud and cold, and the misery of my people had made me bitter at an age when usually even bad liquor tastes of honey.  Not one of all