weeping Mandane, and begged
her to give both to Cambyses when she was gone. She then fell on her
knees and prayed to the gods of her fathers to forgive her for her
apostasy from them.

Mandane begged her to remember her weakness and take some rest, but
she answered: "I do not need any sleep, because, you know, I have such
little waking-time still left me."

As she went on praying and singing her old Egyptian hymns, her heart
returned more and more to the gods of her fathers, whom she had denied
after such a short struggle. In almost all the prayers with which she
was acquainted, there was a reference to the life after death. In the
nether world, the kingdom of Osiris, where the forty-two judges of
the dead pronounce sentence on the worth of the soul after it has been
weighed by the goddess of truth and Thoth, who holds the office of
writer in heaven, she could hope to meet her dear ones again, but only
in case her unjustified soul were not obliged to enter on the career of
transmigration through the bodies of different animals, and her body, to
whom the soul had been entrusted, remained in a state of preservation.
This, "if" filled her with a feverish restlessness. The doctrine that
the well-being of the soul depended on the preservation of the earthly
part of every human being left behind at death, had been impressed on
her from childhood. She believed in this error, which had built pyramids
and excavated rocks, and trembled at the thought that, according to the
Persian custom, her body would be thrown to the dogs and birds of prey,
and so given up to the powers of destruction, that her soul must be
deprived of every hope of eternal life. Then the thought came to her,
should she prove unfaithful to the gods of her fathers again, and once
more fall down before these new spirits of light, who gave the dead body
over to the elements and only judged the soul? And so she raised her
hands to the great and glorious sun, who with his golden sword-like rays
was just dispersing the mists that hung over the Euphrates, and opened
her lips to sing her newly-learnt hymns in praise of Mithras; but her
voice failed her, instead of Mithras she could only see her own great
Ra, the god she had so often worshipped in Egypt, and instead of a
Magian hymn could only sing the one with which the Egyptian priests are
accustomed to greet the rising sun.

This hymn brought comfort with it, and as she gazed on the young light,
the rays of which