Boges hurried away with malicious pleasure in the near success of his scheme.  He met one of the gardeners, whom he promised to bring some of the nobles to inspect a special kind of blue lily, in which the gardener took great pride.  He then hurried to the harem, to make sure that the king’s wives should look their best, and insisted upon Phaedime painting her face white, and putting on a simple, dark dress without ornament, except the chain given her by Cambyses on her marriage, to arouse the pity of the Achaemenidae, to which family she herself belonged.

The eunuch’s cunning scheme succeeded but too well.  At the end of the great banquet Bartja, to whom Cambyses had promised to grant a favour on his victorious return from the war, confessed to him his love for Sappho, a charming and cultured Greek maiden of noble descent, whom he wished to make his wife.  Cambyses was delighted at this proof of the injustice of his jealous suspicions, and announced aloud that Bartja would in a few days depart to bring home a bride.  At these words Nitetis, thinking of her poor sister’s misery, fainted.

Cambyses sprang up pale as death; his lips trembled and his fist was clenched.  Nitetis looked at him imploringly, but he commanded Boges to take the women back to their apartments.  “Sleep well, Egyptian, and pray to the gods to give you the power of dissembling your feelings.  Here, give me wine; but taste it well, for to-day, for the first time, I fear poison.  Do you hear, Egyptian?  Yes, all the poison, as well as the medicine, comes from Egypt.”

Boges gave strict orders that nobody—­not even the queen-mother or Croesus—­was to have access to the hanging gardens, whither he had conducted Nitetis.  Cambyses, meanwhile, continued the drinking bout, thinking the while of punishment for the false woman.  Bartja could have had no share in her perfidy, or he would have killed him on the spot; but he would send him away.  And Nitetis should be handed to Boges, to be made the servant of his concubines and thus to atone for her crimes.

When the king left the hall, Boges, who had slipped out before him, intercepted one of the gardener’s boys with a letter for Prince Bartja.  The boy refused to hand it over, as Nitetis had instructed him to hand it only to the prince; and on Cambyses’ approach the boy fell on his knees, touching the ground with his forehead.  Cambyses snatched the papyrus roll from his hand, and stamped furiously on the ground at seeing that the letter was written in Greek, which he could not read.  He went to his own apartments, followed by Boges, whom he instructed to keep a strict watch over the Egyptian and the hanging gardens.  “If a single human being or a message reach her without my knowledge, your life will be the forfeit.”

Boges, pleading a burning fever, begged that Kandaules, the Lydian captain of eunuchs, who was true as gold and inflexibly severe, should relieve him on the morrow.  On the king’s consent, he begged furthermore that Oropastes, Croesus, and three other nobles should be allowed to witness the opening of the blue lily in the hanging gardens.  Kandaules would see that they enter into no communication with the Egyptian.