The sight fell on his excited mood like rain on a smouldering fire, like hail on sprouting seed.  His eye, which a moment ago had sparkled with enthusiasm, looked down with contempt and disappointment on the miserable creatures of whose race he came.  A line of bitter scorn curled his lip, for this troop of voluntary slaves were beneath his anger—­all the more so as he more vividly pictured to himself what his people had once been and what they were now.  He did not think of all this precisely, but as dusk fell, one scene after another from his own experience rose before his mind’s eye—­occasions on which the Egyptians had behaved ignominiously, and had proved that they were unworthy of freedom and inured to bow in servitude.  Just as one Arab was now able to reduce a host of his fellow-countrymen to subjection, so formerly three Greeks had held them in bondage.  He had known numberless instances of almost glad submission on the part of freeborn Egyptians—­peasants, village magnates, and officials, even on his father’s estates and farms.  In Alexandria and Memphis the sons of the soil had willingly borne the foreign yoke, allowing themselves to be thrust into the shade and humbled by Greeks, as though they were of a baser species and origin, so long only as their religious tenets and the subtleties of their creed remained untouched.  Then he had seen them rise and shed their blood, yet even then only with loud outcries and a promising display of enthusiasm.  But their first defeat had been fatal and it had required only a small number of trained soldiers to rout them.

To make any attempt against a bold and powerful invader as the leader of such a race would be madness; there was no choice but to rule his people in the service of the enemy and so exert his best energies to make their lot more endurable.  His father’s wiser and more experienced judgment had decided that the better course was to serve his people as mediator between them and the Arabs rather than to attempt futile resistance at the head of Byzantine troops.

“Wretched and degenerate brood!” he muttered wrathfully, and he began to consider whether he should not quit the spot and show the arrogant Arab that one Egyptian, at any rate, still had spirit enough to resent his contempt, or whether he should yet wait for the sake of the good cause, and swallow down his indignation.  No! he, the son of the Mukaukas, could not—­ought not to brook such treatment.  Rather would he lose his life as a rebel, or wander an exile through the world and seek far from home a wider field for deeds of prowess, than put his free neck under the feet of the foe.

But his reflections were disturbed by the sound of footsteps, and looking round he saw the gleam of lanterns moving to and fro on the terrace, turned directly on him.  These must be Amru’s servants come to conduct him to their master, who, as he supposed, would now do him the honor to receive him—­tired out with hunting, no doubt, and stretched on his divan while he imperiously informed his guest, as if he were some freed slave, what his wishes were.