The room was empty when the two visitors were shown into it; but in the course of a few minutes Barsiné appeared. Grief had robbed her of the brilliant bloom of her beauty, but had given to her face a new and more spiritual expression. When Charidemus last saw her she might have been a painter’s model for Helen, a Helen, that is, who had not learnt to prefer a lover to a husband; now she was the ideal of an Andromaché. She caught hold of Manasseh’s hand, and lifted it to her lips, and then turned to greet his companion. She had been prepared for his coming, but the sight of him overcame her self-control. She was not one of the women who sob and cry aloud. Persian though she was—and the Persians were peculiarly vehement in the expression of their grief—she had something of a Spartan fortitude; but she could not keep back the big tears that rolled silently down her cheeks.
“It is a sad pleasure to see you,” she said at last, addressing the Macedonian, when she had recovered her voice. “My Memnon liked you well; he often spoke of you after you left us; and now I find that my dear brother liked you and trusted you also. I know you will help me if you can. Have you any counsel to give to the most unhappy of women?”
“Alexander,” said the Macedonian, “is the most generous of conquerors. I would say, Appeal to his clemency and compassion. I know that he respected and admired your husband. I have heard him say—for he has often deigned to talk of such things with me—that Memnon was the only adversary that he feared in all Asia. ‘Whether or no I am an Achilles’—these, lady, were his very words—‘he is certainly a Hector.’ Go to him, then, I say—he comes to-morrow or the next day—throw yourself at his feet. Believe me, you will not repent of it.”
“Oh, sir,” cried the unhappy woman, “that is hard advice for the widow of Memnon and the daughter of Artabazus to follow. To grovel before him on the ground as though I were a slave! It is more than I can bear. Oh! cannot I fly from him to some safe place? Tell me, father,” and she caught Manasseh’s hand, “you know everything, tell me whither I can go. Should I not be out of his reach in Tyre?”
“Lady,” said Manasseh, “I have put this question to myself many times, and have not found an answer. I do not know how you can escape from him. As for Tyre, I am not even sure that it will attempt to stand out against him; but I am sure that if it does it will bitterly repent it. She repented of having stood out against Nebuchadnezzar,[47] and Nebuchadnezzar is to this man as a vulture is to an eagle. And there are words, too, in our sacred books which make me think that an evil time is coming for her. No! I would say, Do not trust yourself to Tyre. And would you gain if you fled to the outer barbarians, to those that dwell by the fountains of the Nile, if you could reach them, or to the Arabs? Would they treat you, think you, better than he, who is at least half a Greek?”
“Let me think,” cried Barsiné, “let me have time.”
“Yes,” said Manasseh, “but not so much time as would rob your supplication of all its grace. Go to him as a suppliant; let him not claim you as a prisoner.”
Some little talk on other matters followed; but the conversation languished, and it was not long before the visitors took their leave.