commencement of the interview, his admiration was awakened far
more strongly now, at hearing such words, uttered, too, in so exalted
a tone, from such a child. He remained a long time silent. At last he
told Artembaris and his son that they might retire. He would take the
affair, he said, into his own hands, and dispose of it in a just and
proper manner. Astyages then took the herdsman aside, and asked him,
in an earnest tone, whose boy that was, and where he had obtained him.

Mitridates was terrified. He replied, however, that the boy was his
own son, and that his mother was still living at home, in the hut
where they all resided. There seems to have been something, however,
in his appearance and manner, while making these assertions, which led
Astyages not to believe what he said. He was convinced that there was
some unexplained mystery in respect to the origin of the boy, which
the herdsman was willfully withholding. He assumed a displeased and
threatening air, and ordered in his guards to take Mitridates into
custody. The terrified herdsman then said that he would explain all,
and he accordingly related honestly the whole story.

Astyages was greatly rejoiced to find that the child was alive. One
would suppose it to be almost inconsistent with this feeling that he
should be angry with Harpagus for not having destroyed it. It would
seem, in fact, that Harpagus was not amenable to serious censure, in
any view of the subject, for he had taken what he had a right to
consider very effectual measures for carrying the orders of the king
into faithful execution. But Astyages seems to have been one of those
inhuman monsters which the possession and long-continued exercise of
despotic power have so often made, who take a calm, quiet, and
deliberate satisfaction in torturing to death any wretched victim whom
they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can
invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to their
pleasure. These monsters do not act from passion. Men are sometimes
inclined to palliate great cruelties and crimes which are perpetrated
under the influence of sudden anger, or from the terrible impulse of
those impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the human soul which,
when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant
are not of this kind. They are the calm, deliberate, and sometimes
carefully economized gratifications of a nature essentially malign.

When, theref