but the very sight of a stranger is odious to the priests, and the moroseness which thou observest is intended as retaliation on me for my alliance with the strangers.  Those very boys, of whom thou spakest, are the greatest torment of my life.  They perform for me the service of slaves, and obey my slightest nod.  One might imagine that the parents who devote their children to this service, and who are the highest in rank among the priesthood, would be the most obedient and reverential servants of the king whom they profess to honor as divine; but believe me, Croesus, just in this very act of devotion, which no ruler can refuse to accept without giving offence, lies the most crafty, scandalous calculation.  Each of these youths is my keeper, my spy.  They watch my smallest actions and report them at once to the priests.”

“But how canst thou endure such an existence?  Why not banish these spies and select servants from the military caste, for instance?  They would be quite as useful as the priests.”

“Ah! if I only could, if I dared!” exclaimed Amasis loudly.  And then, as if frightened at his own rashness, he continued in a low voice, “I believe that even here I am being watched.  To-morrow I will have that grove of fig-trees yonder uprooted.  The young priest there, who seems so fond of gardening, has other fruit in his mind besides the half-ripe figs that he is so slowly dropping into his basket.  While his hand is plucking the figs, his ear gathers the words that fall from the mouth of his king.”

“But, by our father Zeus, and by Apollo—­”

“Yes, I understand thy indignation and I share it; but every position has its duties, and as a king of a people who venerate tradition as the highest divinity, I must submit, at least in the main, to the ceremonies handed down through thousands of years.  Were I to burst these fetters, I know positively that at my death my body would remain unburied; for, know that the priests sit in judgment over every corpse, and deprive the condemned of rest, even in the grave.”

     [This well-known custom among the ancient Egyptians is confirmed,
     not only by many Greek narrators, but by the laboriously erased
     inscriptions discovered in the chambers of some tombs.]

“Why care about the grave?” cried Croesus, becoming angry.  “We live for life, not for death!”

“Say rather,” answered Amasis rising from his seat, “we, with our Greek minds, believe a beautiful life to be the highest good.  But Croesus, I was begotten and nursed by Egyptian parents, nourished on Egyptian food, and though I have accepted much that is Greek, am still, in my innermost being, an Egyptian.  What has been sung to us in our childhood, and praised as sacred in our youth, lingers on in the heart until the day which sees us embalmed as mummies.  I am an old man and have but a short span yet to run, before I reach the landmark which separates us from that farther country.  For the sake of life’s few remaining days, shall I willingly mar Death’s thousands of years?  No, my friend, in this point at least I have remained an Egyptian, in believing, like the rest of my countrymen, that the happiness of a future life in the kingdom of Osiris, depends on the preservation of my body, the habitation of the soul.