ficulty about the guards," said Darius. "They
know us all, and, from deference to our rank and station, they will
let us pass without suspicion, especially if we act boldly and
promptly, and do not give them time to stop and consider what to do.
Besides, I can say that I have just arrived from Persia with
important dispatches for the king, and that I must be admitted
immediately into his presence. If a falsehood must be told, so let it
be. The urgency of the crisis demands and sanctions it."

It may seem strange to the reader, considering the ideas and habits of
the times, that Darius should have even thought it necessary to
apologize to his confederates for his proposal of employing falsehood
in the accomplishment of their plans; and it is, in fact, altogether
probable that the apology which he is made to utter is his
historian's, and not his own.

The other conspirators had remained silent during this discussion
between Darius and Otanes; but now a third, whose name was Gobryas,
expressed his opinion in favor of the course which Darius recommended.
He was aware, he said, that, in attempting to force their way into the
king's presence and kill him by a sudden assault, they exposed
themselves to the most imminent danger; but it was better for them to
die in the manly attempt to bring back the imperial power again into
Persian hands, where it properly belonged, than to acquiesce any
further in its continuance in the possession of the ignoble Median
priests who had so treacherously usurped it.

To this counsel they all finally agreed, and began to make
arrangements for carrying their desperate enterprise into execution.

In the mean time, very extraordinary events were transpiring in
another part of the city. The two magi, Smerdis the king and
Patizithes his brother, had some cause, it seems, to fear that the
nobles about the court, and the officers of the Persian army, were not
without suspicions that the reigning monarch was not the real son of
Cyrus. Rumors that Smerdis had been killed by Prexaspes, at the
command of Cambyses, were in circulation. These rumors were
contradicted, it is true, in private, by Prexaspes, whenever he was
forced to speak of the subject; but he generally avoided it; and he
spoke, when he spoke at all, in that timid and undecided tone which
men usually assume when they are persisting in a lie. In the mean
time, the gloomy recollections of his past life, the memory of his
murdered son, remo