Sethos admitted its flavour, comparing it to that with which he had been regaled in Egypt at Pharaoh's own table, not disparagingly, yet so as to enhance in his listeners' esteem his own importance as a man of pleasure, a man of counsel, and a man of action.
"Their feasts," he observed gravely, "are spread more fairly than ours, their dishes are more sumptuous, their attendants more numerous. There is not the profusion of fish, flesh, and fowl that we waste in our land of Shinar; but dainties are brought at any cost from the extremities of Libya and the other side of the southern mountains. They would be ashamed to hear the heifer lowing in the court for her calf smoking on the board at which they sit, with knife in hand. Is it not so, Sarchedon? You tarried longer as a guest of Pharaoh than I did myself."
"My own experience is chiefly of prison fare," was the answer; "nevertheless, though the lodging was somewhat strait and gloomy, I can in no wise complain of the food. The bread of my captivity was meat and wine, not to mention a barley-cake and a bunch of onions thrust into my hand by the archer who led me to my cell."
"Barley-cake and onions!" exclaimed Agron. "They fight passing well—I pray you suffer me to fill your cups—passing well, indeed, these nimble friends of ours, for men who fare no better than that!"
"Fight!" repeated Sethos, in high disdain. "Call you it fighting, forsooth, to set the battle in array, advancing in countless columns with levelled spears and waving banners, only to halt in orderly line, sound a trumpet, and retire discomfited before the sons of Ashur have time to bend their bows? Fight, comrades! I tell you, that for real fighting, man to man, hand to hand, foot to foot, and buckler to buckler, there is but one nation on the face of the earth."
"And but one champion in that nation," observed his host, with a covert smile at Sarchedon.
It was not lost on the merry nature of Agron, that his good wine already sang in the brain of the king's cup-bearer.
"You are my friend, and judge me too favourably," replied the latter, in perfect good faith. "I am no boaster, by the quiver of Merodach! yet I may say, that this belt of mine girdles a man who never shrank from buffets with the Egyptian at a score, ay, a hundred to one! The sun has scarcely set since the chosen host of Pharaoh, his chief captains, his chariots and horsemen, surrounded me in the desert, as—as I surround this goblet in my grasp. Did I yield? Did I fly? No. I retired to—to draw them on, as it were, and loosen their array. What! thou art a warrior—thou knowest my cunning of defence—my skill—"
"In retreat?" asked the other, laughing outright.
Sethos gazed on him angrily, and tried to rise; but resuming his seat, burst out laughing too.