If ever you should lose one whom you greatly love, take comfort, Prince, for I do not think that life ends with death.

Death is the nurse that puts it to sleep, no more, and in the morning it will wake again to travel through another day with those who have companioned it from the beginning." "Where do all the days lead it to at last, Bakenkhonsu ?" "Ask that of Ki; I do not know." "To Set with Ki, I am angered with him," said the Prince, and went away.
"Not without reason, I think," mused Bakenkhonsu, but when I asked him what he meant, he would not or could not tell me.
So the gloom deepened and the palace, which had been merry in its way, became sad.

None knew what was coming, but all knew that something was coming and stretched out their hands to strive to protect that which they loved best from the stroke of the warring gods.

In the case of Seti and Merapi this was their son, now a beautiful little lad who could run and prattle, one too of a strange health and vigour for a child of the inbred race of the Ramessids.

Never for a minute was this boy allowed to be out of the sight of one or other of his parents; indeed I saw little of Seti in those days and all our learned studies came to nothing, because he was ever concerned with Merapi in playing nurse to this son of his.
When Userti was told of it, she said in the hearing of a friend of mine: "Without a doubt that is because he trains his bastard to fill the throne of Egypt." But, alas! all that the little Seti was doomed to fill was a coffin.
It was a still, hot evening, so hot that Merapi had bid the nurse bring the child's bed and set it between two pillars of the great portico.
There on the bed he slept, lovely as Horus the divine.