“Through a trap-door, of which nobody knows but myself, and which stood wide open waiting for him.  Everything turned out marvellously; I even succeeded in getting hold of a dagger which Bartja had lost while hunting, and in laying it under Nitetis’ window.  In order to get rid of the prince during these occurrences, and prevent him from meeting the king or any one else who might be important as a witness, I asked the Greek merchant Kolxus, who was then at Babylon with a cargo of Milesian cloth, and who is always willing to do me a favor, because I buy all the woollen stuffs required for the harem of him, to write a Greek letter, begging Bartja, in the name of her he loved best, to come alone to the first station outside the Euphrates gate at the rising of the Tistar-star.  But I had a misfortune with this letter, for the messenger managed the matter clumsily.  He declares that he delivered the letter to Bartja; but there can be no doubt that he gave it to some one else, probably to Gaumata, and I was not a little dismayed to hear that Bartja was sitting over the wine with his friends on that very evening.  Still what had been done could not be undone, and I knew that the witness of men like your father, Hystaslies, Croesus and Intaphernes, would far outweigh anything that Darius, Gyges and Araspes could say.  The former would testify against their friend, the latter for him.  And so at last everything went as I would have had it.  The young gentlemen are sentenced to death and Croesus, who as usual, presumed to speak impertinently to the king, will have lived his last hour by this time.  As to the Egyptian Princess, the secretary in chief has just been commanded to draw up the following order.  Now listen and rejoice, my little dove! “’Nitetis, the adulterous daughter of the King of Egypt, shall be punished for her hideous crimes according to the extreme rigor of the law, thus:  She shall be set astride upon an ass and led through the streets of Babylon; and all men shall see that Cambyses knows how to punish a king’s daughter, as severely as his magistrates would punish the meanest beggar.

—­To Boges, chief of the eunuchs, is entrusted the execution of this order.

By command of King Cambyses.  Ariabignes, chief of the Secretaries’

“I had scarcely placed these lines in the sleeve of my robe, when the king’s mother, with her garments rent, and led by Atossa, pressed hastily into the hall.  Weeping and lamentation followed; cries, reproaches, curses, entreaties and prayers; but the king remained firm, and I verily believe Kassandane and Atossa would have been sent after Croesus and Bartja into the other world, if fear of Cyrus’s spirit had not prevented the son, even in this furious rage, from laying hands on his father’s widow.  Kassandane, however, did not say one word for Nitetis.  She seems as fully convinced of her guilt as you and I can be.  Neither have we anything to fear from the enamored Gaumata.  I have hired three men to give him a cool bath in the Euphrates, before he gets back to Rhagae.  Ah, ha! the fishes and worms will have a jolly time!”