mind wagering a gold piece or two on the chance of our remaining alive.”
“Zopyrus is quite right,” said Araspes; “we will make merry and keep our eyes open; who knows how soon they may be closed for ever?”
“No one need be sad who goes to his death as innocently as we do,” said Gyges. “Here, cup-bearer, fill my goblet!”
“Ah! Bartja and Darius!” cried Zopyrus, seeing the two speaking in a low voice together, “there you are at your secrets again. Come to us and pass the wine-cup. By Mithras, I can truly say I never wished for death, but now I quite look forward to the black Azis, because he is going to take us all together. Zopyrus would rather die with his friends, than live without them.”
“But the great point is to try and explain what has really happened,” said Darius.
“It’s all the same to me,” said Zopyrus, “whether I die with or without an explanation, so long as I know I am innocent and have not deserved the punishment of perjury. Try and get us some golden goblets, Bischen; the wine has no flavor out of these miserable brass mugs. Cambyses surely would not wish us to suffer from poverty in our last hours, though he does forbid our fathers and friends to visit us.”
“It’s not the metal that the cup is made of,” said Bartja, “but the wormwood of death, that gives the wine its bitter taste.”
“No, really, you’re quite out there,” exclaimed Zopyrus. “Why I had nearly forgotten that strangling generally causes death.” As he said this, he touched Gyges and whispered: “Be as cheerful as you can! don’t you see that it’s very hard for Bartja to take leave of this world? What were you saying, Darius?”
“That I thought Oropastes’ idea the only admissible one, that a Div had taken the likeness of Bartja and visited the Egyptian in order to ruin us.”
“Folly! I don’t believe in such things.”
“But don’t you remember the legend of the Div, who took the beautiful form of a minstrel and appeared before king Kawus?”
“Of course,” cried Araspes. “Cyrus had this legend so often recited at the banquets, that I know it by heart.
“Kai Kawus hearkened to the words of the disguised Div and went to Masenderan, and was beaten there by the Divs and deprived of his eyesight.”
“But,” broke in Darius, “Rustem, the great hero, came and conquered Erscheng and the other bad spirits, freed the captives and restored sight to the blind, by dropping the blood of the slaughtered Divs into their eyes. And so it will be with us, my friends! We shall be set free, and the eyes of Cambyses and of our blind and infatuated fathers will be opened to see our innocence. Listen, Bischen; if we really should be executed, go to the Magi, the Chaldwans, and Nebenchari the Egyptian, and tell them they had better not study the stars any longer, for that those very stars had proved themselves liars and deceivers to Darius.”
“Yes,” interrupted Araspes, “I always said that dreams were the only real prophecies. Before Abradatas fell in the battle of Sardis, the peerless Panthea dreamt that she saw him pierced by a Lydian arrow.”
“You cruel fellow!” exclaimed Zopyrus. “Why do you remind us, that it is much more glorious to die in battle than to have our necks wrung off?”
“Quite right,” answered the elder man; “I confess that I have seen many a death, which I should prefer to our own,—indeed to life itself. Ah, boys, there was a time when things went better than they do now.”
“Tell us something about those times.”
“And tell us why you never married. It won’t matter to you in the next world, if we do let out your secret.”
“There’s no secret; any of your own fathers could tell you what you want to hear from me. Listen then. When I was young, I used to amuse myself with women, but I laughed at the idea of love. It occurred, however, that Panthea, the most beautiful of all women, fell into our hands, and Cyrus gave her into my charge, because I had always boasted that my heart was invulnerable. I saw her everyday, and learnt, my friends, that love is stronger than a man’s will. However, she refused all my offers, induced Cyrus to remove me from my office near her, and to accept her husband Abradatas as an ally. When her handsome husband went out to the war, this high-minded, faithful woman decked him out with all her own jewels and told him that the noble conduct of Cyrus, in treating her like a sister, when she was his captive, could only be repaid by the most devoted friendship and heroic courage. Abradatas agreed with her, fought for Cyrus like a lion, and fell. Panthea killed herself by his dead body. Her servants, on hearing of this, put an end to their own lives too at the grave of this best of mistresses. Cyrus shed tears over this noble pair, and had a stone set up to their memory, which you can see near Sardis. On it are the simple words: ‘To Panthea, Abradatas, and the most faithful of servants.’ You see, children, the man who had loved such a woman could never care for another.”
The young men listened in silence, and remained some time after Araspes had finished, without uttering a word. At last Bartja raised his hands to heaven and cried: “O thou great Auramazda! why dost thou not grant us a glorious end like Abradatas? Why must we die a shameful death like murderers?”
As he said this Croesus came in, fettered and led by whip-bearers. The friends rushed to him with a storm of questions, and Bartja too went up to embrace the man who had been so long his tutor and guide. But the old man’s cheerful face was severe and serious, and his eyes, generally so mild, had a gloomy, almost threatening, expression. He waved the prince coldly back, saying, in a voice which trembled with pain and reproach: “Let my hand go, you infatuated boy! you are not worth all the love I have hitherto felt for you. You have deceived your brother in a fourfold manner, duped your friends, betrayed that poor child who is waiting for you in Naukratis, and poisoned the heart of Amasis’ unhappy daughter.”
Bartja listened calmly till he heard the word “deceived”; then his hand clenched, and stamping his foot, he cried: “But for your age and infirmities, and the gratitude I owe you, old man, these slanderous words would be your last.”
Croesus beard this outbreak of just indignation unmoved, and answered: “This foolish rage proves that you and Cambyses have the same blood in your veins. It would become you much better to repent of your crimes, and beg your old friend’s forgiveness, instead of adding ingratitude to the unheard-of baseness of your other deeds.”
At these words Bartja’s anger gave way. His clenched hands sank down powerless at his side, and his cheeks became pale as death.
These signs of sorrow softened the old man’s indignation. His love was strong enough to embrace the guilty as well as the innocent Bartja, and taking the young man’s right hand in both his own, he looked at him as a father would who finds his son, wounded on the battle-field, and said: “Tell me, my poor, infatuated boy, how was it that your pure heart fell away so quickly to the evil powers?”
Bartja shuddered. The blood came back to his face, but these words cut him to the heart. For the first time in his life his belief in the justice of the gods forsook him.
He called himself the victim of a cruel, inexorable fate, and felt like a bunted animal driven to its last gasp and hearing the dogs and sportsmen fast coming nearer. He had a sensitive, childlike nature, which did not yet know how to meet the hard strokes of fate. His body and his physical courage had been hardened against bodily and physical enemies; but his teachers had never told him how to meet a hard lot in life; for Cambyses and Bartja seemed destined only to drink out of the cup of happiness and joy.
