GLORY OF CHALDEESCHAPTER VI
GLORY OF CHALDEES
Nightfall—the light of a thousand flambeaux shivered over the great winged bulls guarding the palace gateways. The bulls formed the base of towers faced with brightly enamelled brick, and crowned with masts whence trailed the royal banners. In and out streamed the palace servants—eunuchs of the harem, cooks, grooms, chamberlains, guardsmen; sometimes a chariot thundered through at a gallop, bearing a nobleman to Belshazzar’s banquet. As one peered inward from the gate, he could see the whole broad court of the king’s house lit bright as day by cressets and bonfires. The pictured tiles on the inner walls displayed their lion-hunts, battles, processions, and sieges, so that he who regarded them closely could learn all the history of Babylon for a hundred years by a mere circuit of the court. But Khatin, the royal executioner, and two cronies, who sat drinking wine between the feet of a winged bull, had little heed to give to departed glories. Khatin was a stout muscular giant, with thick, black hair and beard shining with strong pomade and butter. His speech wasgruff as the bay of a hound; and the two eunuchs, Nabua and Khanni, who divided with him the tankard of Armenian white wine, regarded him with awe, as being the person who might be the last to converse with them, in case his Majesty found them disagreeable.
“I tell you,” declared the headsman, dipping his cup for the fifth time, “that Persian Darius is a pretty fellow. I dearly love a man of his spirit. You heard the story? The worthy Igas came near to scraping my close acquaintance. By Marduk! why was the envoy so tender-hearted as not to ask for his head?”
“Surely,” ventured Nabua, “you have nothing against the captain. He only flogged a dirty Jew, and a second Jew interfered. But for Darius, this last, Isaiah they call him, would have been the one to speak with you.”
Khatin gave a hoarse laugh. “Jews? They are mice. Small glory in beheading vermin. Give me men of spirit, my dear eunuch, men of parts, like Igas-Ramman. Ah! You cannot know the satisfaction of feeling the sword go through a stout, stiff neck.”
“Ugh!” grunted the others, feeling their own heads none too firm on their shoulders; and Khanni began soothingly, “Now, by Istar, you would never do the last offices for a friend—for us, by example?”
The executioner burst into a braying chuckle.“Ah! my swallows, my lambs, the more I love a man, the more I love to be by at the end. My father-in-law, Sadu-Rabu, dear man, must needs turn robber; to this day I pride myself on my neatness. ‘Beloved Sadu,’ said I, ‘be content; you have my best art for a smoother journey to the “Mountain of the World” than the late vizier.’”
“Ugh!” grunted the two again, very unhappy; and to turn the drift Khanni interposed, “But you began by praising the Persian?”
“Yes, a man of fine spirit—a very pretty neck—by Samas, an exceeding pretty neck! I wish I were in Susa, as Cyrus’s executioner, just for the hope of testing it; there is small chance of Belshazzar needing me to attend to an envoy.”
“They say,” answered Nabua, “Cyrus has little use for his headsmen. The Persians all love him; they keep the laws, and there are no executions for days together.”
“Then, by Allat, queen of Hades,” cried Khatin, in disgust, “Cyrus is no king! Hark you! Some day I will plot treason and wear the royal cap myself. Then how many ministers will I have? Just one—an honest headsman. A king and an executioner—the one to begin, the other to finish—these are governors enough for the wide world.”
But as Khatin was running on with more wisdom, scarlet-robed torch-bearers began pouring through the gate, with the cry, “The knee! the knee! The king, the daughter of Cyrus, and the Persian envoy!”
The executioner and the eunuchs fell on their knees, to make obeisance. A vast host of guardsmen, priests, and pages came first; and Khatin asked Khanni, “They go to the Hanging Gardens?”
“Yes; the betrothal feast for Atossa will be held there. But they are late. Something has delayed the chief eunuch, and all has waited for him.”
“Yet they come at last. See his Majesty and the Persians.”
The royal party advanced, hidden by a moving hedge of steel-clad guardsmen and the shadows of fifty torches. Belshazzar was in his state, the jewelled embroideries on his robes worth the plunder of six cities. At his side in the chariot stood Darius, no longer in native dress, but in the splendid Median blue caftan. Men whispered that the Persian looked none too merry, though he seemed to be laughing at some jest from the king. Directly behind the car came a litter—all gold relief work and ivory—borne by eight of the Chaldee nobles, wherein rode Atossa and Mermaza, chief eunuch. When the torchlight flashed on her fair hair and the rose and white of her face, there was a loud shout of admiration from great and small, “A goddess! Istar come to earth! The ‘Great Lady’ is amongst us!”
Whereupon Atossa leaned from the litter, crying in her sweet, foreign Chaldee, “The Most High bless you, good people, for your praise!” At which there were more cheerings. But Atossa hadsunk back on the muslin pillows, and closed her eyes to the torch-glare.
They passed down the inclined plane leading from the palace terrace; all about, outside of the red circle of the flambeaux, stretched the dim masses of the foliage of the “paradise,”—the wide park around the king’s house. Then the company came again to a rising way, and a word from Mermaza shook Atossa from her revery.
“Look!” Atossa saw before her, in the faint gloaming, the columned halls of a far-reaching temple, as it were—massive pillars curiously carved and banded, which stretched away along long colonnades, yoked together by heavy vaulting and arches. Marvel enough this would have been, even in Babylon, city of marvels, for these galleries covered a prodigious area; but they were only the beginning of the wonder. Above them, springing from their roof, was a second system of like columns, and arched above this, a third; and above this, so high that the eye grew weary of staring upward, rare Indian palms and stately cedars of Lebanon were spread against a sky dyed red by a hundred great bonfires.
“Do we mount to heaven?” cried the princess.
And Mermaza answered, smiling, “Ah, my lady, I think the ‘Mansion of Ea’ will be scarce fairer than the Hanging Gardens.”
The king had left his chariot, to ascend on foot; but the litter went straight up an easy stairway—higher,higher, till it seemed the climbing would never end. Mermaza told how luxurious chambers were hid in the masses of the lower colonnades; and how a hydraulic engine was pumping unceasingly, raising water from the Euphrates. Then, when at last the crest was reached, suddenly the stars were blotted out by the flaring of innumerable fresh cressets, till the avenues of trees and the almost virgin laurel bowers and fern-brakes glowed as if touched by the dawning.
They had arrived, it seemed to Atossa, upon a broad mountain summit, thickly overgrown with trees, but with here and there a clearing. In and out the trees were flitting white-robed figures, ghost fashion. Scattered about where the torches glimmered brightest, she could see the guests of the king, the nobles of the Chaldees, the chiefs of the priesthoods, their wives, and harem women, all in their gayest robes, crowned with flowers and myrtle wreaths. Out of the shadows of the groves drifted music, now soft and sensuous, now swift and martial, and delicate voices lifted up their song.
But the litter moved onward, through all these leafy ways, until it halted in the open air, at a space on the side of the gardens overlooking the river. On north, south, and west the woods closed in, dense as the primeval forest: but here all the ground was carpeted with sweet grasses, and there was a clear view eastward over the wide stretch of the city, where the shimmer of its lights answered the twinklingstars on high. There were bowers of wreathed blossoms, ivy, and tamarisk; under these were spread many small tables loaded with food and drink; and behind each table waited a eunuch, dark, silent, statue-like, in gaudy livery.
The king had gone on foot before the litter; now he halted in the centre of this sky-canopied hall at the tallest of the bowers, and they set Atossa down beside him.
“Behold,” spoke Belshazzar; “look on these gardens, the like of which is nowhere else in the world. They are given to you. This shall be your feast. These eunuchs are your slaves. We shall all eat of your bounty.”
“The king is kind,” said the Persian, meekly. “What have I done that he vouchsafes such favour?”
Belshazzar laughed before them all.
“Done? Who demands of Istar anything save the brightness from her eyes and honey from her lips?”
“True,” cried fifty at once; “there is no lady like Atossa, like Atossa, daughter of Cyrus.”
Then Mermaza ceremoniously handed his mistress to the high seat beside the two couches prepared for the king and Darius.
Now, in the feast that followed, Belshazzar bore himself as if all the world’s joy were summed up in that one night; he drank, laughed, jested, and went to no small lengths to make Darius as merry as he. But though the prince paid laughter for laughter,and played his part in the game of repartee, he never forgot that close by sat one for whose sake he would have braved the might of Belshazzar and all the host of the Chaldees. And Atossa laughed with her lips, but could not with her eyes. The Persians dared not glance at one another. How much better if Darius had never come on the embassy! It would now take so long to forget!
During the feast the court poet came before Atossa, with a great orchestra of harpers and dulcimer players. The poet sang a marvellous song, full of all the flowery flatteries of the East, praising the princess:—
“O light of heaven who hast come down to dwell among men,Thou art exalted in strength!Mighty art thou as a hyena hunting the young lamb!Mighty art thou as a restless lion!Thou art Istar, maiden of the sky!Thou art Istar, consort of the very Sun!”
“O light of heaven who hast come down to dwell among men,Thou art exalted in strength!Mighty art thou as a hyena hunting the young lamb!Mighty art thou as a restless lion!Thou art Istar, maiden of the sky!Thou art Istar, consort of the very Sun!”
“O light of heaven who hast come down to dwell among men,Thou art exalted in strength!Mighty art thou as a hyena hunting the young lamb!Mighty art thou as a restless lion!Thou art Istar, maiden of the sky!Thou art Istar, consort of the very Sun!”
“O light of heaven who hast come down to dwell among men,
Thou art exalted in strength!
Mighty art thou as a hyena hunting the young lamb!
Mighty art thou as a restless lion!
Thou art Istar, maiden of the sky!
Thou art Istar, consort of the very Sun!”
So the stately poem ran, and Atossa gave its author her thanks and a bracelet unclasped from her own white wrist. But Mermaza, who served her, noticed that she ate little of all the venison and fresh-caught barbel, of the pomegranates and grapes. And he shrewdly observed that Darius did scarcely better. At last the viands were borne away. Belshazzar turned to Mermaza. “Let them bring the drinking bowls,” he commanded.
“Yes, my king,” was the answer; “and shall the sacred vessels of the gods of the nations conqueredby my lord’s predecessors be filled, that we may drink to the health of the princess and the glory of Bel-Marduk?”
“Bring, then, those from the sack of Nineveh, the spoils from the victory over Pharaoh Necho, and from the temple at Jerusalem.”
But Atossa touched the king’s hand. “May my lord’s handmaid speak?”
“Yes,” swore he, “though you ask the head of the chief prince of Babylon.”
“Then do not bring the vessels sacred to the Jewish Jehovah. For though under different names, Persians and Jews alike worship one God.”
Avil-Marduk, close by, was frowning; but Belshazzar answered graciously: “Is this not your own feast? Let Jehovah’s vessels lie in their coffers.”
So the eunuchs set on the tables huge bowls of chased silver, and into these emptied many wine-jars. A sweet odour was wafted by the night breeze from the perfumed paste dissolving in the liquor. Soon the cups began to go about, and the Babylonian nobles roared their pledges,—to Belshazzar; to his betrothed; to Cyrus, their new ally; above all, to Bel-Marduk, guardian of Babylon, “god of gods, and lord of lords, through whose might their city had waxed great for a thousand years.” Belshazzar drank deeply; Darius only touched his goblet; Atossa did not touch it at all.
“Ha, son of Hystaspes!” cried the king, his spirits rising with the wine that was flushing histemples. “You Persians have a custom to take counsel when drunken. Strong wine is a gift from your god, yet they wait to fill your second goblet.”
Darius drained his cup, and handed it to the eunuch behind him.
“True, your Majesty; but the spirit of the wine is not to be invoked lightly. On what take counsel? War? We sealed the treaty of peace to-day.”
“Yet wine is a gift from Nabu, lord of the wise. Woe to the despiser! Come, evening wanes; they call the third hour of the night from Bel’sziggurat. One thing is left.”
Belshazzar rose from his couch. There was a great crash of music. The drinkers were silent instantly. The king stepped beside Atossa.
“Look, lords of the Chaldees!” rang his voice. “This hour I proclaim Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, my affianced wife. One year from this hour shall be my bridal feast. Behold the sovereign lady of the land of Akkad!”
He lifted the blue and white mitre from his head and placed it on the Persian’s golden hair. A great shout reëchoed, making the dying torches shimmer.
“The queen! The queen! Hail, all hail, Atossa!”
Darius rose also. No Babylonian knew what the words cost him. He raised his goblet:—
“To Belshazzar, son of Cyrus. May Ahura grant him and his house prosperity for ten thousand years!”
Another shout. Avil-Marduk, leading the rest, leaped to his feet, crying:—
“To the favour of Sin, of Samas, of Marduk upon the house of Cyrus, and upon the noble Prince Darius!”
The pledge was drunk amid furious cheering and the clatter of wine-cups; and the king shouted, last of all:—
“To the peace betwixt Persia and Babylon, may it be firm forever!”
More applause. Mermaza was bowing before Atossa:—
“Dread lady, the feast is at an end. All the women will return now to the palace; but, after our custom, the king’s nobles will sit over their wine as long as they desire.”
Darius had not spoken to Atossa during the entire evening. But he knew that the end had come, and could not see her go without one word.
“My lord,” said he to Belshazzar, “I must say farewell to the Queen of the Chaldees. Henceforth she is Babylonian, not Persian. Into your hands I commit her. Yet, with your permission, I will speak with her—for the last time, before she enters your harem.”
“Say what you will,” came the careless answer.
Darius stood beside the princess’s chair. It was only for an instant. Why did his voice sound so harsh and metallic? Why did Atossa seem to fear to look him in the face?
“My lady,” said he, “I am at the end of my commission concerning you. I shall be in Babylonfor some time upon your father’s business. But we shall see each other no more. Farewell; may Ahura the All-merciful grant you peace and every joy. And before all, may you learn to forget the name ‘Darius.’”
It was not what he had intended to say; he had thought on these words of parting since the feast began. Why was it his tongue would not move obedient to his will?
Atossa raised her head, gave him one look out of those blue Persian eyes—so blue! Was Mithra’s light-robed azure fairer sight than they?
“And may you forget there was a maid named Atossa, who found all Paradise in sight of you. You are right. Time will be kind. Farewell.”
That was all she said. They had spoken in their own native Persian, which the rest could not understand. And if the sly Mermaza had thoughts in secret, while he watched them, what did Darius care?
Then they took her away in the litter, after Darius had knelt and kissed the hem of her dress. He found himself beside the king, but ceremony was at an end. Noblemen were wandering from table to table, bawling to the yawning eunuchs for more wine. Avil-Marduk came to the king and entered into a familiar conversation on some matter of repairing the temple at Uruk. Seeing that nothing more was expected of him, Darius craved the royal permission, readily granted, to wander about the gardens.
Only a few steps carried him under the shadow of the woods. The cries of the revellers drifted through the thickets; a pale moon was hanging in the sky; there was an uncertain light on the carpet of moss and turf under the great trees. He almost thought himself, except for the shouting, in the heart of an untrodden wood. He wandered on aimlessly, half in a dream. How beautiful Atossa had been that night! He knew that the pain in her heart was as great as that in his—and his, how great! Would Belshazzar treat her honourably, cherish her as “first queen” in his harem, after the immediate need for propitiating the all-powerful Cyrus had passed? The king had impressed him more favourably that night than ever before; he had shown himself affable and generous. Doubtless his flaring passion for the Jewish Ruth had long since vanished; but what if his desires and impulses always mastered him thus easily?
Darius wandered onward, looking within, not without, until he was roused by stumbling against a brick parapet that marked the outer wall of the gardens. He sank upon the trunk of a fallen tree—for this strange forest had been suffered to grow nigh wild since its creation. The noise of the drinkers seemed to come to him from a great way off. Despite the fact that he had touched little wine, he felt his head becoming heavy. Bred as he was to the life of a Persian cavalryman, able to pillow upon the hardest steppe, the prince was closeto falling asleep and slumbering soundly. He was drifting into semiconsciousness; the shouts, the torchlights, were alike fading away. A moment more and he might have slept till daybreak, if not searched for, when a sound of crackling underbrush startled him.
“A deer!” his first thought, the hunter’s instinct foremost, and his hand felt mechanically for an absent sword. In an instant he recognized human voices—three forms approaching through the darkness. “Drinkers,” he argued; “they leave the rest to enjoy a bowl in secret.” And he arose noiselessly, as one of his training could, not desiring to interrupt such a party. Suddenly a familiar voice sounded—Belshazzar’s.
“Darius? Where is he?”
And the voice of Mermaza replied, “Almost I can swear he was in the party that went to the chariots for the palace.”
“More likely asleep under the tables,” came from a third, clearly Avil-Marduk.
“Not there,” commented the eunuch; “he was barely civil in his drinking.”
“No matter if he is not here,” answered Belshazzar. “Faugh! How much longer must I juggle with this marvellous envoy? By Nergal! his only sane talk is of hunting. I grant that he is a fair archer.”
“Not comparable with my lord,” flattered Mermaza.
“Most headlong and unprincely,” added Avil.“Could the king have but seen him this morning rush into strife as a dog after a carcass.”
“Hist!” cautioned the king; “what stirs in the thicket?”
Mermaza peered into the dark. As Darius stood, he could have touched the eunuch; but he remained motionless, and Avil-Marduk reassured: “Only a harmless snake. We are more alone here than in the palace, where every wall has ears.”
Belshazzar groped his way to the log Darius had just quitted and seated himself. The others dutifully remained standing.
“By Samas!” began the king, as if rejoiced to feel himself free to speak, “we have thus far played the game out well. Marduk grant the sky may remain calm! What do they say in the city concerning Nabonidus, my father?”
Avil laughed softly. “Let the king’s heart be enlarged. My underlings tell me the people say, ‘Though the public records still run in the good Nabonidus’s name, he is grievously stricken by the “madness-demon”; and praised be Istar who sends the noble Belshazzar to replace him!’”
“If the tale spreads that Nabonidus is in sound health, shut up in Tema, what then?”
“Many things, my lord,—revolt, mutiny in the army; but nothing shall leak. In a year you will be firmly set upon the throne and can mock at all rumours. Only I fear the two men we have looked askance at for so long, Imbi-Ilu and Daniel.”
“Daniel!” exclaimed the king, as if struck by a sudden suggestion. “I had forgotten about his wench. She is at the harem, of course, Mermaza,—you shall bring her to me in the morning.”
There was a long and very awkward interval before the eunuch found courage to stammer:—
“Pardon, River of Compassion,—I, the least of your slaves—”
“Sheis notat the harem?” demanded the king, threateningly.
What followed, Darius did not well comprehend, thanks to the darkness, and the mingling of Mermaza’s snifflings with Belshazzar’s curses and oaths. The Persian imagined the eunuch had fallen upon his knees, and was almost pleading for his head. It sufficed that substantially the full story of the fruitless pursuit of the Jewess, and the defiance of Imbi-Ilu, was gasped out at last. When it was finished, Belshazzar swore madly.
“Now as Marduk lives, I will have the life of Daniel by another day, and pluck his daughter—”
“Peace, your Majesty,” interposed Avil, abruptly. “Will you raise all Babylon in an uproar? Believe me, Daniel is a power, even as against you, my king. Men may think him old, honest, unsuspecting; but I know better. He is rich, like all his accursed race. The city folk worship him. Imbi-Ilu can rally half the priesthoods, as many as are jealous of Bel-Marduk, in his behalf. And again beware; for raise a wind that will blow into the Persian envoy’s earsthat you are seeking the maid, and when will he trust oath of yours again? I pray all the gods he hear nothing of Mermaza’s rash blunder this day.”
“The envoy!” grunted Belshazzar. “What does he see and know while in Babylon? No bat is blinder to all save his sport.”
“The king is mistaken,” admonished Avil, smoothly, “if he thinks Darius utterly witless. I have watched him, and I boast to be a judge of men. When not in liquor, he is deep and crafty beyond appearance. Do nothing to offend him till the proper time; and as for the Jew’s daughter, let the king wait. Mermaza can find many another as likely maid, sold in the market for twenty shekels.”
“No, by Samas!” asserted Belshazzar, testily. “I wish for no fowls out of that flock. Whatsoever I once set my heart on, that will I possess, though all the plague-demon’s sprites rage round me. I have sworn to gain the girl, and were she ten times less comely than she is, no power of man shall say to the king of Babylon ‘nay.’”
Avil coughed, it seemed derisively, and spoke in an authoritative tone wondrously disrespectful to a crowned monarch:—
“Lord, we have many things to think of before wasting time or sleep on a slip of a girl. When the father is snug in the palace prison, we can give thought to the child. Yet give me time, your Majesty, and I will weave a net for Daniel, and his daughter, too; but make no new attempt on herfor the present. Again I repeat, nothing to offend the Persian.”
“Now, by Allat’s fiends!” cursed Belshazzar, “must it be the Persian, always the Persian? I grow weary dissembling; yet I do it well?”
“Excellently well,” soothed Avil, who felt he might be stepping too far. “But consider once more: touch Daniel before there is proper occasion, or outrage the envoy, and abroad we have war with Cyrus, and at home all Babylon buzzing about the palace in revolt. Gently, my king, gently! Remember that your government is not two months old.”
“Daniel the Jew!” repeated Belshazzar; “the Jew! I do not know why I hate that race so utterly. They are a stiff-necked people, sticking to their Jehovah-worship like flies at the mouth of a wine-jar. And the Persians are like them. Oh, that they all had one neck, that Khatin might cut it!”
“Let the king’s liver be at peace,” began Mermaza, comforting; but he took a step backward. Darius, behind a shrub, had been unable to stir hand or foot from the beginning of the conversation, for the least sound would have betrayed. His cheeks had flushed hot when he heard his own name spoken; he had swelled with utter wrath when he knew that the pledge touching Ruth had been given only to be conveniently broken. Mermaza’s arm swung at a careless gesture, and brushed the Persian’s face. Ashout, and Avil and Belshazzar had leaped upon the eavesdropper before he could escape in the dark.
“Conspirators! Assassins!” Avil-Marduk was howling. “Help, guards! The king is beset!”
But the royal wine had laid half the attendants low with unseen arrows, and the wits of the rest moved very slowly. There were answering cries from the distance, torches tossing, commands thundered; but it was nothing easy to find one’s way in the wood. Avil had gripped the Persian round the throat, so that for an instant he gave not one gurgle; but when Darius once put forth his strength, the three found they had bayed a lion indeed. With his left fist he smote over Mermaza, so that the eunuch went down with a groan. The chief priest nipped fast, but the Persian tore away his fingers, plucked him round the girdle, and flung him sprawling. The king remained. Darius’s first impulse was to cry aloud, but thoughts raced fast at that moment. To betray his identity might mean ruin for kingdoms. For an instant prince and monarch grappled. Belshazzar’s fingers closed like talons of steel, but Darius had not been vainly trained to wrestle. Twice he lifted Belshazzar, and the king clung to the ground; the third time, just as Avil-Marduk was staggering to his feet, Belshazzar’s foothold spun from beneath him, and he fell heavily upon the greensward. There were shouts now, torches coming nearer.
Darius could see them flashing on bright steel.
“Murderers!” bawled Avil. “The king is slain!”
Darius took a great bound into the thicket, a second, a third; then ran swiftly as a cat, and as silently, onward in the dark. His long Median cloak caught on a thorn bush and was whisked from his shoulders before he realized it. To recover it in the gloom and danger was impossible. “Ahura grant,” ran his prayer, “none may find it and recognize!” Many of the drinkers had staggered from their wine and were wandering about, shouting, “Murder! Save the king!” but their pursuit was aimless. Yet he saw men staring at him as he ran back toward the banqueting area. Who was this at the royal feast without a courtly garment? None recognized him as yet, but he knew that his condition, if he remained, must excite speedy comment. He was a stranger to the place, and wandered vainly about, seeking the exit, and only running on new groups of frightened eunuchs and tipsy guardsmen. His position was becoming serious, when of a sudden he was startled by a hand plucking at his elbow.
As he started, a familiar voice sounded in his ear:—
“My lord, do you not know me? Your servant, Isaiah the Jew. My lord is in trouble. What may I do for you?”
The prince wasted no words. “In Ahura’s name, lead me down from these gardens and away from all these people before I am recognized.”
“Willingly,” came the answer. “I know this place as well by starlight as at noonday. We are near the private staircase by the northern wall of the gardens.” And Isaiah led away into a winding path between dark shrubbery. In a moment they were at the head of a long, narrow stairway that wound downward and was lost in the gloom below. There were two spearmen on guard at the upper landing, but both had long since invoked the wine-god over-piously, and were stretched prone and helpless. Isaiah gave them only a sniff of contempt. He plucked a flickering flambeau from the wall, and guided the Persian downward—a weird and uncanny descent. Above there were shouts and commands; and before they had put twenty stairs betwixt them and the landing, there came a cry from over their heads.
“Guard this exit! These swine are drunken; the assassins may have fled this way!”
“Speed, my lord,” admonished Isaiah in a whisper. The sound of many feet following made them descend by bounds. Well it was that their pursuers were deep in their cups, and they themselves were sober. At the foot of the stairs there were two more guards, each as prone and senseless as their fellows on high.
“The danger is at an end, my prince,” declared Isaiah; “they can suspect nothing now.”
He led the Persian by a second dark circuit under the colonnades of the lowest stage of the gardensto where they had left the carriages at the beginning of the feast. Here none met them, though there was still much din from the gardens. Darius told himself that if the king of Babylon and his lords often feasted thus, not fifty sword-hands would be found sober if an enemy attacked the palace on such a night. They found no chariots waiting to bear the royal guests back to the palace. And Isaiah remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders:—
“None expect them, my lord. Good Babylonians drink all night.”
“All the better. Guide me back to the palace in secret.”
So the two walked back together, and a man need not be wise to imagine what the Persian told the Jew, and the Jew told the Persian.
At the great gate of the palace they met more drunken guards, and Isaiah conducted Darius to his own chambers, where at last they found the Persians of the prince’s suite moderately sober.
“Let us pray the one God, my friend,” were Darius’s words at parting, “the one God we both fear, for strength and wisdom beyond that of man. A great work lies before us, and by His help we will bring low the ‘Lie’ whose seat is this great Babylon!”