So Rameses gave him a signet of lapis lazuli, and its
inscription commanded him who sat at any time thereafter on the throne
of Egypt to honor the prayer of its bearer in the unspeakable name of
the Holy One.
"After the death of Rameses," the narrator went on, "we went to Tape,
my father and I, to inscribe the hatchments and carve the scene of the
Judgment of the Dead in the tomb of the great king. Now, I am my
father's only child and have been taught his craft. I have been an apt
pupil, and he had no fear in trusting me with the execution of the
fresco. I had long been in rebellion, practising in secret my lawless
ideas, and I was seized with an uncontrollable aversion to marring
those holy walls with the conventional ugliness commanded by the
ritual. I assembled my ideas and dared. I worked rapidly and well.
The work was done before my father discovered it." Kenkenes paused and
laughed a little.
"Suffice it to say the fresco was erased. And the solemnity of the
crypt was hardly restored before my father found that his sacred
signet, which he always wore, was gone. Nay, nay, I might not search
for it more than the fruitless once, for he declared, and of a truth
believed firmly, that the great king had reclaimed his gift.
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