Slow Signal Fade ebooks

"See," said the midwife, "here is a head shaped to wear a crown."
Whereon Asti, his mother, forgetting her caution in her joy, or perhaps
inspired by the gods, for from her childhood she was a prophetess,
answered,
"Yes, and I think that this head and a crown will come close together,"
and she kissed him and named him Rames after her royal forefather, the
founder of their line.
As it chanced a spy overheard this saying and reported it to the
Council, and the Council urged Pharaoh to cause the boy to be put away,
as they had urged in the case of his father, Mermes, because of the
words of omen that Asti had spoken, and because she had given her son a
royal name, naming him after the majesty of Ra, as though he were indeed
the child of a king. But Pharaoh would not, asking with his soft smile
whether they wished him to baptise his daughter in the blood of another
infant who drew his first breath upon the same day, and adding:
"Ra sheds his glory upon all, and this high-born boy may live to be a
friend in need to her whom Amen has given to Egypt.


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