Without compromising one jot of his own dignity, the wily eunuch's answer was yet temperate and respectful to the Great King.
"My lord is himself the child of Ashur and of Baal—the father gives freely to the son, requiring only honour and reverence in return."
"Fill my cup!" thundered the king to Sethos, who ministered hastily to his wants. "I have not found it so," he continued, harping still on the theme that thus chafed him. "The honour and reverence I pay them willingly, though they keep me standing long enough in their temples, and, perhaps because they sit so far off, it seems hard to make them hear. But if honour and reverence are to signify, sheep and oxen, wine, jewels, raiment of needlework and heaps of treasure, they have had their share from Ninus—henceforth I will follow the example of those poor slaves we found in Egypt, the captives of our captives, who worship but one God, and offer him neither silver nor gold!"
"Therefore are they but servants to the servants of my lord the king," replied Assarac, unabashed by the frowns of Ninus and the open derision of certain veterans, who took their creed from their leader, as they took their orders—without comment or inquiry.
"Prate not to me!" was the angry answer; "I have scores of them down yonder bound in the outer court amongst my Egyptian captives. I cannot tell, Arbaces, what hinders me now, this moment, from sending you with a handful of spearmen to clear his temple of its white-robed locusts, and drive in these strangers, Egyptians and all, to worship Baal in their stead."
The chief captain, who to certain scruples of religion added those of custom, policy, and propriety, would have ventured on expostulation; but Assarac interposed.
"The gods, thy fathers, who look upon us to-night!" said he, in a stern loud voice, that awed even Ninyas and the younger revellers into attention while he pointed gravely upward where the stars were shining down in their eternal splendour on all the royal magnificence and glittering profusion of that feast in the open court.
At the same moment, sweeping round the outer walls of the palace, vibrating through its long corridors and lofty painted chambers, there rose a cry, so wild, so pitiful, so unearthly, that it arrested the goblet in each man's hand, froze the jest on his lip, and curdling the blood in his veins, caused him to sit mute and petrified, as if turned to stone.
The Great King started, and bade Arbaces summon up his guard; but Assarac's voice was heard once more, solemn and majestic in its notes of warning and reproach.
"The gods, thy fathers!" he repeated, looking Ninus sternly in the face, "who have spared the blasphemer, but visited his sin on the innocent cause thereof. Hear those Egyptian prisoners mourning for a comrade this moment passed away, wearied and out-worn by a toilsome march to the house of his captivity, stricken and thrust through by the iron that has entered into his soul!"