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The poor, heavily-afflicted girl trembled at these words, and when the eunuch was gone, begged Mandane to tell her what it all meant. The girl, instructed by Boges, said that Bartja had stolen secretly into the hanging-gardens, and had been seen by several of the Achaemenidae as he was on the point of getting in at one of the windows.
She went once more to the window and perceived two figures coming out of the house. One she recognized as the eunuch Boges; he was talking to a beautiful Persian woman carelessly dressed. They approached her window. Nitetis hid herself behind the half-opened shutter and listened, for she fancied she heard her own name. "The Egyptian is still asleep." said Boges.
Boges is a prophet; he foretells you a speedy return home to Egypt, or a quiet bed in the black earth in Babylon, and the kind Boges wishes you a peaceful sleep. Farewell, my broken flower, my gay, bright viper, wounded by its own sting, my pretty fir-cone, fallen from the tall pine-tree!" "How dare you speak in this impudent manner?" said the indignant princess.
Thus far she had been speaking Greek, but now, addressing the attendants who remained standing in an attitude of deep reverence, she began in broken Persian: "Accept my thanks also. In Babylon you shall receive a thousand gold staters." Then turning to Boges, she added: "Let this sum be distributed among the attendants at latest by the day after to-morrow. Take me to my carriage, Croesus."
Boges grew pale at these words; Cambyses, however, shook his head as if the idea did not please him, and said: "Whom am I to believe then, if the eyes of my best warriors fail them? and who would wish to be a judge, if testimony such as yours is not to be considered valid?" "Evidence quite as weighty as ours, will prove that we must have been in error."
Spare your blushes, my little pomegranate-blossom, till I have told you all; and then perhaps in future you will not be so hard upon poor Boges; you will see that he has a good heart, full of kindness for his beautiful, saucy little countrywoman." "I do not trust you," she answered, interrupting these assurances.
"Seize him, Bischen, put on his fetters! Take him to prison the traitor, the perjurer! He shall be strangled to-morrow. Death is the penalty of perjury. Your heads for theirs, you guards, if they escape. Not one word more will I hear; away with you, you perjured villains! Boges, go at once to the hanging-gardens and bring the Egyptian to me. Yet no, I won't see that serpent again.
The tortured nerves of the princess could not resist this fresh blow, and before Boges left, he carried the poor girl senseless into her sleeping-room, the door of which he barred carefully. A few minutes later, two men, one old, the other young, came up through the trap-door which Boges had examined so carefully two days before.
She hid nothing, confessed that Boges had given her his sanction and assistance to the meeting with Gaumata, and ended by saying: "I know that I have forfeited my life, and am the worst and most ungrateful creature in the world; but none of all this would have happened, if Oropastes had allowed his brother to marry me."
Boges, pleading a burning fever, begged that Kandaules, the Lydian captain of eunuchs, who was true as gold and inflexibly severe, should relieve him on the morrow. On the king's consent, he begged furthermore that Oropastes, Croesus, and three other nobles should be allowed to witness the opening of the blue lily in the hanging gardens.
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