But Ninyas shuddered while they hurried him under the outspread wings of those colossal bulls; for something told him they guarded a prison-gate, obdurate and impenetrable as the very granite from which their huge proportions were hewn.
"It is all over," he whispered to Sethos. "The bow is broke and there are no more arrows in the quiver. This is one of the Great Queen's master-strokes. I ought not to have trusted her, and yet I thought my mother loved me too well to have worsted me like this!" Whereto his follower, from whose smooth and easy nature fortune, good or bad, glided without making much impression, only answered, "A silken cushion is a softer couch than the desert sand; a palace in Babylon is a nobler lodging than the fortress of Ascalon. Baal himself knows not what the coming hour may bring, but the three wings never cease to turn their everlasting wheel, and the spoke that is lowest one moment comes uppermost the next!"
The cup-bearer's philosophy was so far borne out, that the royal prisoner found no reason to complain of his personal treatment. His banquets were sumptuous, his pleasures magnificent, his retinue submissive, as if he were in truth a king; but, turn which way he would, he encountered the smooth faces and downcast looks of the priests of Baal, who answered his questions with irritating professions of ignorance, and waited on him with a subservience maddening in its vigilant humility. To those whose very existence depended on the favour of Assarac had been confided the care of this important captive, and scrupulously they fulfilled their trust. Though he wandered at will from court to court and hall to hall of the roomy palace—though he might take the air, when it pleased him, in its gardens, or follow the chase in its wilderness—he knew that never for a moment was he unwatched—felt that words, looks, gestures, all were noted and reported, that his very thoughts were known; for while many of his wishes seemed anticipated, his attempts at escape were foiled almost before contrived.
This constant supervision could not but tell on such a nature as that of Ninyas, could not but injure a constitution already sapped by luxury and indulgence. His health gave way; his mind became affected. He drank wine indeed, freely, but neither ate nor slept, wandering listlessly to and fro, chiefly in the open air, regardless of times and season—during the hours of darkness, as under the glare of noon. Had it not been for Sethos, who attended him with touching fidelity, his intellects must have wholly succumbed, and perhaps the purpose of his incarceration would have been accomplished. But the cup-bearer exhausted all his ingenuity to rouse and keep alive the faculties of his lord, desponding, nevertheless, more than was natural to his cheerful spirit and tendency in all things to hope the best.
Kalmim, watching the king with sudden frightened gaze, marked how pale he had grown and wan, how shrunken seemed his stature, how loose the costly garments hung on his limbs.
Could he see her? She knew not. He started indeed, and stood at gaze like a frightened deer, then muttered and ran on, looking up at the moon, pausing after a few steps, with drooping head and downcast eyes, to stare on the ground beneath his feet.
She was a hard, bold, pleasure-loving woman, yet her heart melted within her, and she wept.
"Are you satisfied?" whispered Beladon, in accents of considerable alarm. "I tell you, it is death to know our secrets, death to look on the sight you now see. Will you not depart ere it be too late?"
But Kalmim, it is scarce necessary to observe, had another object besides that of an idle visit to the king's palace, in thus cajoling her admirer and risking discovery by the dissolute priests of Baal. She had reason to believe that Sethos shared the captivity of his lord, and with Sethos she resolved to speak, if such an interview could be brought about by woman's wit, woman's duplicity, or woman's charms. Laying her hand caressingly on his arm, she shot one of her sweetest glances in Beladon's face, and whispered,
"Be patient with me, if you love me. I do but ask that you will take me hence to the cedar gallery. I know my way then to the outer court, and so can depart in peace."