"Avenge me, my daughter, and fear nothing, for
the gods are about you. I see their awful eyes. Oh! I burn, I burn!"
Then his head fell back, and the peace of death descended on his
tortured brow.
Tua kissed his dead brow, and knelt at his side in prayer. After a
little while she rose and said:
"It has pleased Pharaoh, the just and perfect, to depart to his
everlasting habitation in Osiris. Make it known that this god is dead,
and that I rule alone in Egypt. Send hither the priest of Osiris, that
he may repeat the Ritual of Departing, and you, physicians, do your
office."
So the priest came, but at the door Asti caught him by the hand and
asked:
"How did you destroy the image of wax?"
"I burned it upon the altar in the old sanctuary of this temple," he
answered.
"O, Fool!" said Asti, "you should have buried it. Know that with the
enchanted thing you have burned away the life of Pharaoh also."
Then that priest fell swooning to the ground, and another had to be
summoned to utter the Ritual of Departing.
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