CHAPTER XI
THE SANDAL AND THE STRAWS
And now came a day when Nineveh was Nineveh at last, and Ninus stood upon his palace roof and was glad because of the Opal of the East. At his feet a vast brown city lay—a city builded by his heart—each brick a monument to other hearts that broke in rearing temples to Assyria's gods. In the streets a busy hum of trade arose, where marts and booths were opened to the sale of a thousand wares; where citizens in gala dress swarmed in and out of unfamiliar doors; where troops of children danced in wreaths of flowers, or white-robed priests filed past, chanting their deep-toned songs and bearing loads in sacrifice to the temple of Nineb and up its winding ziggurat.
From the palace steps a broad, smooth road ran down to the western gate and was lined by effigies of stone, great wingéd bulls, and lions crouching as for a spring. Around it all the mighty wall lay coiled, its top of a width whereon three chariots might be driven abreast, while above rose a thousand and a half a thousand towers.
The army still encompassed Nineveh around, yet the King was not for war. He looked on his work and sighed a sigh of peace, then stretched his mighty limbs and prepared a lion hunt. For three long years his heart had yearned for sports afield, with a yearning which hunters alone may know; yet, because of his vow, the bow and spear were left untouched by the monarch's hand.
Consulting his oracles, and likewise the prophet Azet whose arts foretold great deeds of wonder to his arms, the King appointed another Governor in Syria and commanded Menon to join him on the banks of the lower Euphrates. Here game might be found in plenty where Ninus had known rare pleasures of the chase in former days; so, smiling, he set him forth.
When the messengers had come to Azapah, Menon bowed to the master's will and departed with a heavy heart, first sending Semiramis with Huzim back to Ascalon, to dwell for a little space till chance might bring him into Syria again. He reached the banks of the Euphrates and waited the royal hunter till a moon had waned; but Ninus came not, because of the slowness of his journey to the place.
The King, in sitting much upon his tower while Nineveh was being builded, had laid a deal of fat upon his bones, and tedious travel irked him; moreover, in the hunt his breath was shorter than of yore and his thews less strong. Yet the mind may ofttimes entertain a zeal beyond the body's power, and in this King Ninus brewed a trouble for himself—but the trouble was yet to come.
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Semiramis, at parting with her lord, wept bitter tears; yet she, too, bowed where wisdom left no loophole of escape, and journeyed with Huzim and Habal back to Ascalon. And here her grief must find another stab, keener, deeper, more sad than the parting from one who would come again; for in the house of Simmas an old man lay asleep—a woman's sandal pressed against his beard.