A SERPENT ON A ROCK
A southern sun beat fierce and pitiless on the terrace of the queen's palace at Babylon. Hewn out of the solid rock, a smooth and glistening pavement refracted those noon-day beams like burnished metal. Not a breath of wind arose to cool the heated air; not a bird dared spread its wing against the burning sky; yet Assarac stood motionless and thoughtful in the open unshaded space, heedless alike of throbbing brain, blistered skin, and sandals scorching under his very feet.
Suddenly he started and stepped quickly forward, like one about to trample something beneath his heel. Checking himself in the act, he paused to mark a serpent gliding along the unfriendly pavement, as if seeking for a hole or crevice wherein to shelter its shining skin and smooth, flat, cunning head.
He had thought to slay it; but no, it was not in him to do the creature harm, as he stood watching it with wistful eyes, and bitter thoughts, and a strange sad feeling of compassion at his heart.
Uncoiling many a sleek and glistening fold, it worked its way slowly, painfully, traversing in all its length and breadth the surface of that pitiless pavement, so different from the dank morass and tangled brake for which its nature yearned. The wise reptile, type of caution, intellect, sagacity, measured its cunning in vain against the beautiful impenetrable slab, could find no solace in the hard unyielding stone.
"Is it better, after all," thought Assarac, "to wind, like this wily creature, along the devious paths of policy, or to take the straight and open road, leading to danger indeed, but to danger that may be foreseen, assailed and vanquished with the strong hand? Would I be the tiger, blind with desire of blood leaping at the wild-deer's throat, to slake a cruel thirst? or the serpent, crafty, patient, persevering, exhausting all its ingenuity, all its devices, against an obstacle smooth and impenetrable as this adamantine pavement, heated by the sun's rays, not to warm and cherish, but to scorch, wither, and consume?"
Thus meditating, with an unusual cloud of despondency on his brow, Assarac turned away, and traversing the large cool hall of the queen's palace, walked thoughtfully through leafy wilderness and shaded pleasure-ground to the silver temple of the Fish-God, where he had been summoned by Semiramis, that he might assist with his counsels the great design on which her heart was bent.
Kalmim, who had again resumed attendance in the household of her royal mistress, rejoicing that the days of mourning were at last expired, waited as usual in the porch.
With winning smiles and sparkling eyes—since Kalmim's bow was always bent for practice as for slaughter—she drew those silken hangings that screened the presence of Semiramis, and admitted him to the court of ivory and silver, as she had admitted Sarchedon once before, when that comely warrior arrived from the camp, bearing the signet of the Great King.
The queen had not forgotten. Something in the gesture of her tirewoman, something in the murmur of doves, the babble of waters, the scene, the place, the listless noon-day heat, recalled that other interview but too forcibly now, and she received Assarac with a languid loving smile.