“Not another if! on the contrary, know that I consider thy petition for the punishment of Gyges so imprudent, that I refuse to grant it.  Now leave me and appear not again before mine eyes until I summon thee!  Yesterday I gained a son, only to lose him to-day.  Rise!  I demand no tokens of a love and humility, which thou hast never felt.  Go to the priests when thou needest comfort and counsel, and see if they can supply a father’s place.  Tell Neithotep, in whose hands thou art as wax, that he has found the best means of forcing me to grant demands, which otherwise I should have refused.  Hitherto I have been willing to make every sacrifice for the sake of upholding Egypt’s greatness; but now, when I see that, to attain their own ends, the priests can strive to move me by the threat of treachery to their own country, I feel inclined to regard this privileged caste as a more dangerous enemy to Egypt, than even the Persians.  Beware, beware!  This once, having brought danger upon Egypt through my own fatherly weakness, I give way to the intrigues of my enemies; but, for the future, I swear by the great goddess Neith, that men shall see and feel I am king; the entire priesthood shall be sacrificed rather than the smallest fraction of my royal will!  Silence—­depart!”

The prince left, but this time a longer interval was necessary, before the king could regain even outward cheerfulness sufficient to enable him to appear before his guests.

Psamtik went at once to the commander of the native troops, ordered him to banish the Egyptian captain who had failed in executing his revengeful plans, to the quarries of Thebais, and to send the Ethiopians back to their native country.  He then hurried to the high-priest of Neith, to inform him how much he had been able to extort from the king,

Neithotep shook his head doubtfully on hearing of Amasis’ threats, and dismissed the prince with a few words of exhortation, a practice he never omitted.

Psamtik returned home, his heart oppressed and his mind clouded with a sense of unsatisfied revenge, of a new and unhappy rupture with his father, a fear of foreign derision, a feeling of his subjection to the will of the priests, and of a gloomy fate which had hung over his head since his birth.

His once beautiful wife was dead; and, of five blooming children, only one daughter remained to him, and a little son, whom he loved tenderly, and to whom in this sad moment he felt drawn.  For the blue eyes and laughing mouth of his child were the only objects that ever thawed this man’s icy heart, and from these he now hoped for consolation and courage on his weary road through life.

“Where is my son?” he asked of the first attendant who crossed his path.

“The king has just sent for the Prince Necho and his nurse,” answered the man.

At this moment the high-steward of the prince’s household approached, and with a low obeisance delivered to Psamtik a sealed papyrus letter, with the words:  “From your father, the king.”