e should accompany him to Babylon by pointing out that "the
Euphrates is jealous of the Tigris for having first had the honour of
her presence," and that "the First City of the World ought clearly to
possess the most illustrious princess of the Earth." Of course, if there
is any base person who cannot derive an Aramisian satisfaction (_v.
sup._) from such things as this, he had better abstain from the _Cyrus_.
But happier souls they please--not exquisitely, perhaps, or
tumultuously, but still well--with a mild tickle which is not
unvoluptuous. One is even a very little sorry for Philip Dastus when he
begs his cruel idol to write to him the single word ESPEREZ, and
meanwhile kindly puts it in capitals and a line to itself. Almost
immediately afterwards an oracle juggles with him in fashion delightful
to himself, and puzzling to everybody except the intelligent reader,
who, it is hoped, will see the double meaning at once.

Il t'est permis d'esperer
De la faire soupirer,
Malgre sa haine:
Car un jour entre ses bras,
Tu rencontreras
La fin de ta peine.

Alas! without going further (upon honour and according to fact), one
sees the _other_ explanation--that Mandane will have to perform the
uncomfortable duty--often assigned to heroines--of having Philidaspes
die in her lap.

For the present, however, only discomfiture, not death, awaits him. The
Medes blockade Babylon to recover their princess; it suffers from
hunger, and Philidaspes, with Mandane and the chivalrous Sacian Prince
Mazare, whom we have heard of before, escapes to Sinope. Then the events
recorded in the very beginning happen, and Mandane, after escaping the
flames of Sinope through Mazare's abduction of her by sea, and suffering
shipwreck, falls into the power of the King of Pontus. This calls a halt
in the main story; and, as before, a "Troisieme Livre" consists of
another huge inset--the hugest yet--of seven hundred pages this time,
describing an unusually, if not entirely, independent subject--the
loves and fates of a certain Philosipe and a certain Polisante. This
volume contains a rather forcible boating-scene, which supplies the
theme for the old frontispiece.

Refreshed as usual by this excursion,[168] the author returns (in vol.
v., bk. i., chap. iii.) to Cyrus, who is once more in peril, and in a
worse one than ever. Cyaxares, arriving at Sinope, does not find his
daughter, but does discover that Artamene,