"I wish I had never gone there!" answered Ninyas petulantly. "I wish the reins had rotted in his hand who turned my chariot from the Gates of Brass to leave Babylon and all the pleasures it contained!"
"It would not have been like your father's child," said the queen, "to have forborne going forth to warfare with the host. You would not be my son," she added more tenderly, "did not your heart leap to the rattle of a quiver and the roll of a chariot, wheeling at a gallop amongst the spearmen. Think you it was no pain to me when I sent you down yonder to learn your first lesson in war, under the eye of my lord the king? But you have made yourself a name for valour, and I am content."
"Valour!" repeated Ninyas. "Men have a strange way of computing courage and portioning out the fame, which is indeed of small value when you have got it. Is it such a great deed to be driven under shield in a chariot of iron through ranks of half-armed wretches flying for their lives? I saw one of our bowmen stand his ground in a vineyard, when we passed the Nile, having three arrows in his limbs and a spear through his body. But Arbaces scarce cast an eye on him as he drove by in hot haste to bring up the rearguard of spears; and I thought, if a man would be accounted mighty, it were well to be born a king's son. Valour indeed! That very day, an hour later, I would have bartered all the valour and all the fame of the Assyrian army for a cup of the roughest wine that ever burst a skin. I love pleasure, for my part; and whosoever will have it is welcome to my share of hunger and thirst, long marches, weary sieges, heat, privation, night watches, and all the troubles of war."
The queen smiled, well pleased, as it would seem, with this frank confession of opinions, in which of all women on earth she was the least inclined to share. Had she been a man, she thought, the saddle should have been her only home, the spear never out of her hand. Not even Ninus, with his insatiable desire for fame, should have flaunted so far and wide the banners of Assyria, so pushed the conquests of the mighty line founded by Nimrod the Great. And yet here was one of her own blood, her very counterpart, who, being of the stronger and nobler sex, could sit calmly down in the flush of his youth to scoff at warlike honours, to confess his unworthy preference of inglorious ease and material pleasures to the immortality of a hero.
"For one so young," said she, "you have already attained to high dignity. Even my lord the king has spoken of you as a judicious leader and a man of valour in fight. Arbaces himself was obliged to admit,—my son, you are ill at ease,—Arbaces, I say, though so devoted to the king's interests that he seems to look with an evil eye on the king's successor, could not but acknowledge that on the field you were a worthy descendant of the line of Ashur; though in camp, he added, the example of one prince was more injurious to the discipline of armies than the taking of ten towns by assault, with all the license and outrages of a storm."
There was enough of his father's nature in the lion's cub to bring the flash to his eye, the scowl to his brow, while he listened.
"Arbaces dared to speak thus of me!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet, and grasping instinctively at a gilded javelin standing against the wall. "He must be a bold man, this chief captain of the Assyrian host."
"He must be a bold man," repeated the queen, "since he is your enemy and mine."
"Let him beware!" said the prince. "I can take up my mother's quarrel as heartily as my own. He will have no woman to deal with if he crosses me. And yet," he added, sinking back on the couch, and turning his head aside amongst its cushions, "there is not in the whole empire one whom I would so gladly call my friend."
A shade of perplexity crossed the queen's brow; but she forced a careless laugh while she asked,