AN EGYPTIAN PRINCESS.

By Georg Ebers

Volume 8.

CHAPTER VIII.

The sun was already trying to break a path for his rays through the thick curtains, that closed the window of the sick-room, but Nebenchari had not moved from the Egyptian girl’s bedside.  Sometimes he felt her pulse, or spread sweet-scented ointments on her forehead or chest, and then he would sit gazing dreamily into vacancy.  Nitetis seemed to have sunk into a deep sleep after an attack of convulsions.  At the foot of her bed stood six Persian doctors, murmuring incantations under the orders of Nebenchari, whose superior science they acknowledged, and who was seated at the bed’s head.

Every time he felt the sick girl’s pulse he shrugged his shoulders, and the gesture was immediately imitated by his Persian colleagues.  From time to time the curtain was lifted and a lovely head appeared, whose questioning blue eyes fixed at once on the physician, but were always dismissed with the same melancholy shrug.  It was Atossa.  Twice she had ventured into the room, stepping so lightly as hardly to touch the thick carpet of Milesian wool, had stolen to her friend’s bedside and lightly kissed her forehead, on which the pearly dew of death was standing, but each time a severe and reproving glance from Nebenchari had sent her back again into the next room, where her mother Kassandane was lying, awaiting the end.

Cambyses had left the sick-room at sunrise, on seeing that Nitetis had fallen asleep; he flung himself on to his horse, and accompanied by Phanes, Prexaspes, Otanes, Darius, and a number of courtiers, only just aroused from their sleep, took a wild ride through the game-park.  He knew by experience, that he could best overcome or forget any violent mental emotion when mounted on an unmanageable horse.

Nebenchari started on hearing the sound of horses’ hoofs in the distance.  In a waking dream he had seen Cambyses enter his native land at the head of immense hosts; he had seen its cities and temples on fire, and its gigantic pyramids crumbling to pieces under the powerful blows of his mighty hand.  Women and children lay in the smouldering ruins, and plaintive cries arose from the tombs in which the very mummies moved like living beings; and all these-priests, warriors, women, and children—­the living and the dead—­all had uttered his,—­Nebenchari’s,—­name, and had cursed him as a traitor to his country.  A cold shiver struck to his heart; it beat more convulsively than the blood in the veins of the dying girl at his side.  Again the curtain was raised; Atossa stole in once more and laid her hand on his shoulder.  He started and awoke.  Nebenchari had been sitting three days and nights with scarcely any intermission by this sick-bed, and such dreams were the natural consequence.