Boges sank considerably in public estimation, for it was known that
Cambyses had ceased to visit the harem, and the chief of the eunuchs had
owed all his importance to the women, who were compelled to coax from
Cambyses whatever Boges desired for himself or others. Not a day passed
on which the mortified official did not consult with the supplanted
favorite Phaedime, as to the best means of ruining Nitetis, but their
most finely spun intrigues and artifices were baffled by the strength of
king's love and the blameless life of his royal bride.

Phaedime, impatient, mortified, and thirsting for vengeance, was
perpetually urging Boges to some decided act; he, on the contrary,
advised patience.

At last, however, after many weeks, he came to her full of joy,
exclaiming: "I have devised a little plan which must ruin the Egyptian
woman as surely as my name is Boges. When Bartja comes back, my treasure,
our hour will have arrived."

While saying this the creature rubbed his fat, soft hands, and, with his
perpetual fulsome smile, looked as if he were feasting on some good deed
performed. He did not, however, give Phaedime the faintest idea of the
nature of his "little plan," and only answered her pressing questions
with the words: "Better lay your head in a lion's jaws, than your secret
in the ears of a woman. I fully acknowledge your courage, but at the same
time advise you to remember that, though a man proves his courage in
action, a woman's is shown in obedience. Obey my words and await the
issue in patience." Nebenchari, the oculist, continued to attend the
queen, but so carefully abstained from all intercourse with the Persians,
that he became a proverb among them for his gloomy, silent ways. During
the day he was to be found in the queen's apartments, silently examining
large rolls of papyri, which he called the book of Athotes and the sacred
Ambres; at night, by permission of the king and the satraps of Babylon,
he often ascended one of the high towers on the walls, called
Tritantaechmes, in order to observe the stars.

The Chaldaean priests, the earliest astronomers, would have allowed him
to take his observations from the summit of the great temple of Bel,
their own observatory, but he refused this offer decidedly, and persisted
in his haughty reserve. When Oropastes attempted to explain to him the
celebrated Babylonian sun-dial, introduced by Anaximander of Miletus into
Greece, he turned from the Magian with a sc