“His visits to Tachot’s sick-bed are not the least comfort to her, for instead of encouraging her kindly, he endeavors to convince her that she too deserves punishinent from the gods.  He spends all his remarkable eloquence in trying to persuade her, that she must forget this world entirely and only try to gain the favor of Osiris and the judges of the nether world by ceaseless prayers and sacrifices.  In this manner he only tortures our poor sick child, for she has not lost her love of life.  Perhaps I have still too much of the Greek left in me for a queen of Egypt; but really, death is so long and life so short, that I cannot help calling even wise men foolish, when they devote the half of even this short term to a perpetual meditation on the gloomy Hades.

“I have just been interrupted again.  Our great physician, Thutmes, came to enquire after his patient.  He gives very little hope, and seems surprised that her delicate frame has been able to resist death so long.  He said yesterday:  ’She would have sunk long ago if not kept up by her determined will, and a longing which gives her no rest.  If she ceased to care for life, she could allow death to take her, just as we dream ourselves asleep.  If, on the other hand, her wish could be gratified, she might, (though this is hardly probable) live some years yet, but if it remain but a short time longer unfulfilled, it will certainly wear her to death.

“Have you any idea for whom she longs so eagerly?  Our Tachot has allowed herself to be fascinated by the beautiful Bartja, the brother of your future husband.  I do not mean to say by this that he has employed magic, as the priest Ameneman believes, to gain her love; for a youth might be far less handsome and agreeable than Bartja, and yet take the heart of an innocent girl, still half a child.  But her passionate feeling is so strong, and the change in her whole being so great, that sometimes I too am tempted to believe in the use of supernatural influence.  A short time before you left I noticed that Tachot was fond of Bartja.  Her distress at first we thought could only be for you, but when she sank into that dreamy state, Ibykus, who was still at our court, said she must have been seized by some strong passion.

“Once when she was sitting dreaming at her wheel, I heard him singing softly Sappho’s little love-song to her: 

                   “I cannot, my sweet mother,
                    Throw shuttle any more;
                    My heart is full of longing,
                    My spirit troubled sore,
                    All for a love of yesterday
                    A boy not seen before.”

[Sappho ed.  Neue XXXII.  Translation from Edwin Arnold’s
Poets of Greece.]

“She turned pale and asked him:  ‘Is that your own song?’

“‘No,’ said he, ‘Sappho wrote it fifty years ago.’

“‘Fifty years ago,’ echoed Tachot musingly.