ghed, and Darius, joining in their merriment, said: "Now
you shall hear a piece of very good news. I have kept it to the last,
because it is the best I have. Now, Bartja, prick up your ears. Your
mother, the noble Kassandane, has been cured of her blindness! Yes, yes,
it is quite true.--Who cured her? Why who should it be, but that crabbed
old Nebenchari, who has become, if possible, moodier than ever. Come,
now, calm yourselves, and let me go on with my story; or it will be
morning before Bartja gets to sleep. Indeed. I think we had better
separate now: you've heard the best, and have something to dream about
What, you will not? Then, in the name of Mithras, I must go on, though
it should make my heart bleed.

"I'll begin with the king. As long as Phanes was in Babylon, he seemed
to forget his grief for Nitetis.

"The Athenian was never allowed to leave him. They were as inseparable
as Reksch and Rustem. Cambyses had no time to think of his sorrow, for
Phanes had always some new idea or other, and entertained us all, as
well as the king, marvellously. And we all liked him too; perhaps,
because no one could really envy him. Whenever he was alone, the tears
came into his eyes at the thought of his boy, and this made his great
cheerfulness--a cheerfulness which he always managed to impart to the
king, Bartja,--the more admirable. Every morning he went down to the
Euphrates with Cambyses and the rest of us, and enjoyed watching the
sons of the Achaemenidae at their exercises. When he saw them riding at
full speed past the sand-hills and shooting the pots placed on them into
fragments with their arrows, or throwing blocks of wood at one another
and cleverly evading the blows, he confessed that he could not imitate
them in these exercises, but at the same time he offered to accept a
challenge from any of us in throwing the spear and in wrestling. In his
quick way he sprang from his horse, stripped off his clothes--it
was really a shame--and, to the delight of the boys, threw their
wrestling-master as if he had been a feather.

[In the East, nudity was, even in those days, held to be
disgraceful, while the Greeks thought nothing so beautiful as the
naked human body. The Hetaira Phryne was summoned before the judges
for an offence against religion. Her defender, seeing that sentence
was about to be pronounced against his client, suddenly tore away
the garment which covered her bosom. The artifice was succes