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No tax-farmer's slave could keep track of the flow of intangible wealth when the bills for a million sesterces passed to and fro like cards in an Egyptian game. Men richer than the fabled Croesus carried all their wealth in leather wallets in the form of mortgages on gangs of slaves, certificates of ownership of cargoes, promises to pay and contracts for delivery of merchandise.
Again the man whose brain had turned the base metal of poverty into the gold of Croesus smiled. "I'm not a betting man, Paul, but I'd be willing to lay a moderate wager that within the next year or two we shall see a panic that will leave many scars and not a few wrecks." "And that conviction doesn't alarm you?" The musician let his features mirror his nervous surprise.
When Nitetis opened her eyes once more, a few hours later, Kassandane was holding her right hand, Atossa kneeling at her feet, and Croesus standing at the head of her bed, trying, with the failing strength of old age, to support the gigantic frame of the king, who was so completely overpowered by his grief, that he staggered like a drunken man.
At last Bartja raised his hands to heaven and cried: "O thou great Auramazda! why dost thou not grant us a glorious end like Abradatas? Why must we die a shameful death like murderers?" As he said this Croesus came in, fettered and led by whip-bearers. The friends rushed to him with a storm of questions, and Bartja too went up to embrace the man who had been so long his tutor and guide.
All antecedent historical parallels the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Croesus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition sank into trifles compared with the overthrow of this towering Persian colossus.
"Have you seen my son?" cried Croesus. "Where is Phanes?" "I was to bid you farewell from them both." "Then they are gone. Whither? How was it possible?" . . . "The Athenian and the Persian," began the slave, "had a slight dispute in the anteroom. This over, I was told to divest both of their robes.
A few hours after the fatal shooting-match, Bartja had followed Croesus' advice and had gone off to Sais with his young wife. They found Rhodopis there. She had yielded to an irresistible impulse and, instead of returning to Naukratis, had stopped at Sais. Bartja's fall on stepping ashore had disturbed her, and she had with her own eyes seen an owl fly from the left side close by his head.
True to that dark article of Grecian faith which punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the Pythian replied, that Croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person the crimes of Gyges, the murderer of his master; that, for the rest, the declarations of the oracle had been verified; the mighty empire, denounced by the divine voice, had been destroyed, for it was his own, and the mule, Cyrus, was presiding over the Lydian realm: a mule might the Persian hero justly be entitled, since his parents were of different ranks and nations.
By the advice of Croesus and Phanes, Cambyses gave in to these proposals, though much against his own will: he went so far, indeed, as to offer sacrifice in the temple of Neith, and allowed the newly-created high-priest of the goddess to give him a superficial insight into the nature of the mysteries.
At parting, Aristomachus said: "Salute Gyges in my name; tell him I ask his forgiveness, and hope one day either to enjoy his friendship, or, if that cannot be, to meet him as a fair foe on the field of battle." "Who knows what the future may bring?" answered Croesus giving his hand to the Spartan.
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