[201] Then he washed his face, and, reason prevailing over his troubled feelings, approached his guests and led them to the feast, having first restored the prisoner who had been detained as hostage for the youngest. Other Egyptian dignitaries feasted with them.
[202] The method of entertainment followed in each case ancestral practice, since he strongly disapproved of neglecting old customs, particularly at a festivity where the pleasures outnumber the disagreeables.
[203] When the guests were seated, arranged by his commands in order of age, as at that date it was not the custom to recline at convivial gatherings, they were surprised to find that the Egyptians affected the same fashions as the Hebrews, and were careful of order of precedence, and knew how to discriminate between younger and older in the honours which they paid them.
[204] “It may be,” they said, “that in other times the style of life in this country was less civilized, until this man, when put over the state, introduced good order not only in the important matters which give rise to success in peace and war, but in those regarded as less important which mainly belong to the lighter side of life. For festivities demand cheerfulness and have no room for the over-grave and austere guest.”
[205] While they thus quietly descanted in his praise the tables were brought in, not over-sumptuously laden, because their host, on account of the famine, disliked the thought of luxury while others were suffering want; and they themselves had the sound sense to include in their eulogies this also, that he had shunned the odious fault of tasteless display. He had preserved, they said, the attitude both of a sympathizer with the needy and of the host at a feast, had set himself in the mean between the two and escaped censure on either count.
[206] The arrangements, then, did not offend good taste, but were suitable to the occasion, and any deficiency was made good by the constant signs of kind feeling shewn in toasts and good wishes and invitations to take refreshment, things which to liberal and cultured temperaments give more pleasure than all the preparations of food and drink provided by the lovers of high feasting for themselves and others, who make a parade of what is unworthy of care and attention with the ostentation natural to men of little mind.