It would not be possible at present to be revenged upon the king.  There was little chance of eluding his sleepless vigilance, or of leading him into any rash act of self-destruction.  Besides, she knew him too well not to understand that he was the only man alive who could save Persia from further revolutions, and keep the throne against all comers.  She loved power and the splendour of her royal existence, perhaps more than she loved Zoroaster.  The idea of another change in the monarchy was not to be thought of, now that Darius had subdued Babylon.  She had indeed a half-concerted plan with Phraortes to seize the power in Media in case the king were defeated in Babylonia, and the scroll she had so imprudently forgotten that very morning was merely an order to lay aside all such plans for the present, since the king had returned in triumph.

As far as her conscience was concerned, Atossa would as soon have overthrown and murdered the king to gratify the personal anger she felt against him at the present moment, as she would have wrecked the universe to possess a jewel she fancied.  There existed in her mind no idea of proportion between the gratification of her passions and the means she might employ thereto; provided one gratification did not interfere with another which she always saw beyond.  Nothing startled her on account of its mere magnitude; no plan was rejected by her merely because it implied ruin to a countless number of human beings who were useless to her.  She coldly calculated the amount of satisfaction she could at any time obtain for her wishes and desires, so as not to prejudice the gratification of all the possible passions she might hereafter experience.

As for injuring Zoroaster, she would not have thought of it.  She loved him in a way peculiar to herself, but it was love, nevertheless,—­and she had no idea of wreaking her disappointment upon the object on which she had set her heart.  As a logical consequence, she determined to turn all her anger against Nehushta, and she pictured to herself the delicious pleasure of torturing the young princess’s jealousy to desperation.  To convince Nehushta that Zoroaster was deceiving her, and really loved herself, the queen; to force Zoroaster into some position where he must either silently let Nehushta believe that he was attached to Atossa, or, as an alternative, betray the king’s secrets by speaking the truth; to let Nehushta’s vanity be flattered by the king’s admiration,—­nay, even to force her into a marriage with Darius, and then by suffering her again to fall into her first love for Zoroaster, bring her to a public disgrace by suddenly unmasking her to the king—­to accomplish these things surely and quickly, reserving for herself the final delight of scoffing at her worsted rival—­all this seemed to Atossa to constitute a plan at once worthy of her profound and scheming intelligence, and most sweetly satisfactory to her injured vanity and rejected love.