“It is the last present I worked for him,” exclaimed Mandane.
“I asked him for this token, because I knew you would not trust me. Who ever heard of a prisoner loving his jailer?”
“But tell me at once, quickly—what does my old playfellow want me to do? Look, the-western sky is beginning to glow. Evening is coming on, and I must arrange my mistress’s dress and ornaments for the banquet.”
“Well, I will not keep you long,” said the eunuch, becoming so serious that Mandane was frightened. “If you do not choose to believe that I would run into any risk out of friendship to you, then fancy that I forward your love affair to humble the pride of Oropastes. He threatens to supplant me in the king’s favor, and I am determined, let him plot and intrigue as he likes, that you shall marry Gaumata. To-morrow evening, after the Tistar-star has risen, your lover shall come to see you. I will see that all the guards are away, so that he can come without danger, stay one hour and talk over the future with you; but remember, only one hour. I see clearly that your mistress will be Cambyses’ favorite wife, and will then forward your marriage, for she is very fond of you, and thinks no praise too high for your fidelity and skill. So to-morrow evening,” he continued, falling back into the jesting tone peculiar to him, “when the Tistar-star rises, fortune will begin to shine on you. Why do you look down? Why don’t you answer? Gratitude stops your pretty little mouth, eh? is that the reason? Well, my little bird, I hope you won’t be quite so silent, if you should ever have a chance of praising poor Boges to your powerful mistress. And what message shall I bring to the handsome Gaumata? May I say that you have not forgotten him and will be delighted to see him again? You hesitate? Well, I am very sorry, but it is getting dark and I must go. I have to inspect the women’s dresses for the birthday banquet. Ah! one thing I forgot to mention. Gaumata must leave Babylon to-morrow. Oropastes is afraid, that he may chance to see you, and told him to return to Rhage directly the festival was over. What! still silent? Well then, I really cannot help you or that poor fellow either. But I shall gain my ends quite as well without you, and perhaps after all it is better that you should forget one another. Good-bye.”
It was a hard struggle for the girl. She felt nearly sure that Boges was deceiving her, and a voice within warned her that it would be better to refuse her lover this meeting. Duty and prudence gained the upper hand, and she was just going to exclaim: “Tell him I cannot see him,” when her eye caught the ribbon she had once embroidered for her handsome playfellow. Bright pictures from her childhood flashed through her mind, short moments of intoxicating happiness; love, recklessness and longing gained the day in their turn over her sense of right, her misgivings and her prudence, and before Boges could finish his farewell, she called out, almost in spite of herself and flying towards the house like a frightened fawn: “I shall expect him.”
Boges passed quickly through the flowery paths of the hanging-gardens. He stopped at the parapet end cautiously opened a hidden trap-door, admitting to a secret staircase which wound down through one of the huge pillars supporting the hanging-gardens, and which had probably been intended by their original designer as a means of reaching his wife’s apartments unobserved from the shores of the river. The door moved easily on its hinges, and when Boges had shut it again and strewed a few of the river-shells from the garden walks over it, it would have been difficult to find, even for any one who had come with that purpose. The eunuch rubbed his jeweled hands, smiling the while as was his custom, and murmured: “It can’t fail to succeed now; the girl is caught, her lover is at my beck and call, the old secret flight of steps is in good order, Nitetis has been weeping bitterly on a day of universal rejoicing, and the blue lily opens to-morrow night. Ah, ha! my little plan can’t possibly fail now. And to-morrow, my pretty Egyptian kitten, your little velvet paw will be fast in a trap set by the poor despised eunuch, who was not allowed, forsooth, to give you any orders.”
His eyes gleamed maliciously as he said these words and hurried from the garden.
At the great flight of steps he met another eunuch, named Neriglissar, who held the office of head-gardener, and lived at the hanging-gardens.
“How is the blue lily going on?” asked Boges.
“It is unfolding magnificently!” cried the gardener, in enthusiasm at the mere mention of his cherished flower. “To-morrow, as I promised, when the Tistar-star rises, it will be in all its beauty. My Egyptian mistress will be delighted, for she is very fond of flowers, and may I ask you to tell the king and the Achaemenidae, that under my care this rare plant has at last flowered? It is to be seen in full beauty only once in every ten years. Tell the noble Achaemenidae; this, and bring them here.”
“Your wish shall be granted,” said Boges smiling, “but I think you must not reckon on the king, as I do not expect he will visit the hanging-gardens before his marriage with the Egyptian. Some of the Archimenidae, however, will be sure to come; they are such lovers of horticulture that they would not like to miss this rare sight. Perhaps, too, I may succeed in bringing Croesus. It is true that he does not understand flowers or doat on them as the Persians do, but he makes amends for this by his thorough appreciation of everything beautiful.”
“Yes, yes, bring him too,” exclaimed the gardener. “He will really be grateful to you, for my queen of the night is the most beautiful flower, that has ever bloomed in a royal garden. You saw the bud in the clear waters of the reservoir surrounded by its green leaves; that bud will open into a gigantic rose, blue as the sky. My flower...”
The enthusiastic gardener would have said much more in praise of his flower, but Boges left him with a friendly nod, and went down the flight of steps. A two-wheeled wooden carriage was waiting for him there; he took his seat by the driver, the horses, decked out with bells and tassels, were urged into a sharp trot and quickly brought him to the gate of the harem-garden.
That day was a busy, stirring one in Cambyses’ harem. In order that the women might look their very best, Boges had commanded that they should all be taken to the bath before the banquet. He therefore went at once to that wing of the palace, which contained the baths for the women.
While he was still at some distance a confused noise of screaming, laughing, chattering and tittering reached his ears. In the broad porch of the large bathing-room, which had been almost overheated, more than three hundred women were moving about in a dense cloud of steam.
[We read in Diodorus XVII. 77. that the king of Persia had as many
wives as there are days in the year. At the battle of Issus,
Alexander the Great took 329 concubines, of the last Darius,
captive.]
The half-naked forms floated over the warm pavement like a motley crowd of phantoms. Their thin silken garments were wet through and clung to their delicate figures, and a warm rain descended upon them from the roof of the bath, rising up again in vapor when it reached the floor.
Groups of handsome women, ten or twenty together, lay gossiping saucily in one part of the room; in another two king’s wives were quarrelling like naughty children. One beauty was screaming at the top of her voice because she had received a blow from her neighbor’s dainty little slipper, while another was lying in lazy contemplation, still as death, on the damp, warm floor. Six Armenians were standing together, singing a saucy love-song in their native language with clear-toned voices, and a little knot of fair-haired Persians were slandering Nitetis so fearfully, that a by-stander would have fancied our beautiful Egyptian was some awful monster, like those nurses used to frighten children.
Naked female slaves moved about through the crowd, carrying on their heads well-warmed cloths to throw over their mistresses. The cries of the eunuchs, who held the office of door-keepers, and were continually urging the women to greater haste,—the screeching calls of those whose slaves had not yet arrived,—the penetrating perfumes and the warm vapor combined to produce a motley, strange and stupefying scene.
A quarter of an hour later, however, the king’s wives presented a very different spectacle.
They lay like roses steeped in dew, not