elves heard within him, and will keep him back
from many a sinful act. I will remain your ally in this matter; for, as
Cambyses' dying father appointed me the counsellor of his son in word
and deed, I venture occasionally a bold word to arrest his excesses.
Ours is the only blame from which he shrinks: we alone can dare to speak
our opinion to him. Let us courageously do our duty in this our office:
you, moved by love to Persia and your son, and I by thankfulness to that
great man to whom I owe life and freedom, and whose son Cambyses is.
I know that you bemoan the manner in which he has been brought up; but
such late repentance must be avoided like poison. For the errors of the
wise the remedy is reparation, not regret; regret consumes the heart,
but the effort to repair an error causes it to throb with a noble
pride."

"In Egypt," said Nitetis, "regret is numbered among the forty-two deadly
sins. One of our principal commandments is, 'Thou shalt not consume
thine heart.'"

[In the Ritual of the Dead (indeed in almost every Papyrus of the
Dead) we meet with a representation of the soul, whose heart is
being weighed and judged. The speech made by the soul is called the
negative justification, in which she assures the 42 judges of the
dead, that she has not committed the 42 deadly sins which she
enumerates. This justification is doubly interesting because it
contains nearly the entire moral law of Moses, which last, apart
from all national peculiarities and habits of mind, seems to contain
the quintessence of human morality--and this we find ready
paragraphed in our negative justification. Todtenbuch ed. Lepsius.
125. We cannot discuss this question philosophically here, but the
law of Pythagoras, who borrowed so much from Egypt, and the contents
of which are the same, speaks for our view. It is similar in form
to the Egyptian.]

"There you remind me," said Croesus "that I have undertaken to arrange
for your instruction in the Persian customs, religion and language. I
had intended to withdraw to Barene, the town which I received as a gift
from Cyrus, and there, in that most lovely mountain valley, to take
my rest; but for your sake and for the king's, I will remain here and
continue to give you instruction in the Persian tongue. Kassandane
herself will initiate you in the customs peculiar to women at the
Persian court, and Oropastes, the high-priest, has been ordered by the
k