“I could envy you for this happy view of life,” sighed Kassandane.  “My years are fewer than yours, and yet every new day seems to me a punishment sent by the Immortals.”

“Can I be listening to the wife of the great Cyrus?” asked Croesus.  “How long is it since courage and confidence left that brave heart?  I tell you, you will recover sight, and once more thank the gods for a good old age.  The man who recovers, after a serious illness, values health a hundred-fold more than before; and he who regains sight after blindness, must be an especial favorite of the gods.  Imagine to yourself the delight of that first moment when your eyes behold once more the bright shining of the sun, the faces of your loved ones, the beauty of all created things, and tell me, would not that outweigh even a whole life of blindness and dark night?  In the day of healing, even if that come in old age, a new life will begin and I shall hear you confess that my friend Solon was right.”

“In what respect?” asked Atossa.

“In wishing that Mimnermos, the Colophonian poet, would correct the poem in which he has assigned sixty years as the limit of a happy life, and would change the sixty into eighty.”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Kassandane.  “Even were Mithras to restore my sight, such a long life would be dreadful.  Without my husband I seem to myself like a wanderer in the desert, aimless and without a guide.”

“Are your children then nothing to you, and this kingdom, of which you have watched the rise and growth?”

“No indeed! but my children need me no longer, and the ruler of this kingdom is too proud to listen to a woman’s advice.”

On hearing these words Atossa and Nitetis seized each one of the queen’s hands, and Nitetis cried:  “You ought to desire a long life for our sakes.  What should we be without your help and protection?”

Kassandane smiled again, murmuring in a scarcely audible voice:  “You are right, my children, you will stand in need of your mother.”

“Now you are speaking once more like the wife of the great Cyrus,” cried Croesus, kissing the robe of the blind woman.  “Your presence will indeed be needed, who can say how soon?  Cambyses is like hard steel; sparks fly wherever he strikes.  You can hinder these sparks from kindling a destroying fire among your loved ones, and this should be your duty.  You alone can dare to admonish the king in the violence of his passion.  He regards you as his equal, and, while despising the opinion of others, feels wounded by his mother’s disapproval.  Is it not then your duty to abide patiently as mediator between the king, the kingdom and your loved ones, and so, by your own timely reproofs, to humble the pride of your son, that he may be spared that deeper humiliation which, if not thus averted, the gods will surely inflict.”

“You are right,” answered the blind woman, “but I feel only too well that my influence over him is but small.  He has been so much accustomed to have his own will, that he will follow no advice, even if it come from his mother’s lips.”