“Have winged creatures any need to be afraid of precipices?”

“Certainly; when their strength fails them.”

“But I am strong.”

“Stronger creatures than you will try to break your pinions.”

“Let them.  I want nothing but what is right, and shall trust to my star.”

“Do you know its name?”

“It ruled in the hour of my birth, and its name is Anahita.”

“I think I know better.  A burning ambition is the sun, whose rays guide all your actions.  Take care; I tried that way myself once; it leads to fame or to disgrace, but very seldom to happiness.  Fame to the ambitious is like salt water to the thirsty; the more he gets, the more he wants.  I was once only a poor soldier, and am now Cambyses’ ambassador.  But you, what can you have to strive for?  There is no man in the kingdom greater than yourself, after the sons of Cyrus . . .  Do my eyes deceive me?  Surely those two men riding to meet us with a troop of horsemen must be Gyges and Zopyrus.  The Angare, who left the inn before us, must have told them of our coming.”

“To be sure.  Look at that fellow Zopyrus, how he’s waving and beckoning with that palm-leaf.”

“Here, you fellows, cut us a few twigs from those bushes-quick.  We’ll answer his green palm-leaf with a purple pomegranate-branch.”

In a few minutes the friends had embraced one another, and the two bands were riding together into the populous town, through the gardens surrounding the lake Gygaeus, the Sardians’ place of recreation.  It was now near sunset, a cooler breeze was beginning to blow, and the citizens were pouring through the gates to enjoy themselves in the open air.  Lydian and Persian warriors, the former wearing richly-ornamented helmets, the latter tiaras in the form of a cylinder, were following girls who were painted and wreathed.  Children were being led to the lake by their nurses, to see the swans fed.  An old blind man was seated under a plane-tree, singing sad ditties to a listening crowd and accompanying them on the Magadis, the twenty-stringed Lydian lute.  Youths were enjoying themselves at games of ball, ninepins, and dice, and half-grown girls screaming with fright, when the ball hit one of their group or nearly fell into the water.

The travellers scarcely noticed this gay scene, though at another time it would have delighted them.  They were too much interested in enquiring particulars of Bartja’s illness and recovery.

At the brazen gates of the palace which had formerly belonged to Croesus, they were met by Oroetes, the satrap of Sardis, in a magnificent court-dress overloaded with ornaments.  He was a stately man, whose small penetrating black eyes looked sharply out from beneath a bushy mass of eyebrow.  His satrapy was one of the most important and profitable in the entire kingdom, and his household could bear a comparison with that of Cambyses in richness and splendor.  Though he possessed fewer wives and attendants than the king, it was no inconsiderable troop of guards, slaves, eunuchs and gorgeously-dressed officials, which appeared at the palace-gates to receive the travellers.