men will do what I tell
them blindfold; they will not pursue you; and I am so old that it would
be little loss to Persia, if my head were the price of my disobedience."

"Thanks, thanks, my friend," said Bartja, giving him his hand; "but I
cannot accept your offer, because I am innocent, and I know that though
Cambyses is hasty, he is not unjust. Come friends, I think the king will
give us a hearing to-day, late as it is."

CHAPTER III.

Two hours later Bartja and his friends were standing before the king. The
gigantic man was seated on his golden throne; he was pale and his eyes
looked sunken; two physicians stood waiting behind him with all kinds of
instruments and vessels in their hands. Cambyses had, only a few minutes
before, recovered consciousness, after lying for more than an hour in one
of those awful fits, so destructive both to mind and body, which we call
epileptic.

[The dangerous disease to which Herodotus says Cambyses had been
subject from his birth, and which was called "sacred" by some, can
scarcely be other than epilepsy. See Herod, III. 33.]

Since Nitetis' arrival he had been free from this illness; but it had
seized him to-day with fearful violence, owing to the overpowering mental
excitement he had gone through.

If he had met Bartja a few hours before, he would have killed him with
his own hand; but though the epileptic fit had not subdued his anger it
had at least so far quieted it, that he was in a condition to hear what
was to be said on both sides.

At the right hand of the throne stood Hystaspes, Darius's grey-haired
father, Gobryas, his future father-in-law, the aged Intaphernes, the
grandfather of that Phaedime whose place in the king's favor had been
given to Nitetis, Oropastes the high-priest, Croesus, and behind them
Boges, the chief of the eunuchs. At its left Bartja, whose hands were
heavily fettered, Araspes, Darius, Zopyrus and Gyges. In the background
stood some hundred officials and grandees.

After a long silence Cambyses raised his eyes, fixed a withering look on
his fettered brother, and said in a dull hollow voice: "High-priest, tell
us what awaits the man who deceives his brother, dishonors and offends
his king, and darkens his own heart by black lies."

Oropastes came forward and answered: "As soon as such a one is proved
guilty, a death full of torment awaits him in this world, and an awful
sentence on the bridge Chinvat; for he has transgressed the