Mandane rose, trembling with fear. Her fresh young face was pale as death, and her red lips were blue from terror.
“Tell all you know about yesterday evening; but remember, a lie and your death are one and the same.”
The girl’s knees trembled so violently that she could hardly stand, and her fear entirely took away the power of speaking.
“I have not much patience,” exclaimed Cambyses. Mandane started, grew paler still, but could not speak. Then Phanes came forward and asked the angry king to allow him to examine the girl, as he felt sure that fear alone had closed her lips and that a kind word would open them.
Cambyses allowed this, and the Athenian’s words proved true; no sooner had he assured Mandane of the good-will of all present, laid his hand on her head and spoken kindly to her, than the source of her tears was unlocked, she wept freely, the spell which had seemed to chain her tongue, vanished, and she began to tell her story, interrupted only by low sobs. She hid nothing, confessed that Boges had given her his sanction and assistance to the meeting with Gaumata, and ended by saying: “I know that I have forfeited my life, and am the worst and most ungrateful creature in the world; but none of all this would have happened, if Oropastes had allowed his brother to marry me.”
The serious audience, even the king himself, could not resist a smile at the longing tone in which these words were spoken and the fresh burst of sobs which succeeded them.
And this smile saved her life. But Cambyses would not have smiled, after hearing such a story, if Mandane, with that instinct which always seems to stand at a woman’s command in the hour of her greatest danger, had not known how to seize his weak side, and use it for her own interests, by dwelling much longer than was necessary, on the delight which Nitetis had manifested at the king’s gifts.
“A thousand times” cried she, “did my mistress kiss the presents which were brought from you, O King; but oftenest of all did she press her lips to the nosegay which you plucked with your own hands for her, some days ago. And when it began to fade, she took every flower separately, spread out the petals with care, laid them between woollen cloths, and, with her own hands, placed her heavy, golden ointment-box upon them, that they might dry and so she might keep them always as a remembrance of your kindness.”
Seeing Cambyses’ awful features grow a little milder at these words, the girl took fresh courage, and at last began to put loving words into her mistress’s mouth which the latter had never uttered; professing that she herself had heard Nitetis a hundred times murmur the word “Cambyses” in her sleep with indescribable tenderness. She ended her confession by sobbing and praying for mercy.
The king looked down at her with infinite contempt, though without anger, and pushing her away with his foot said: “Out of my sight, you dog of a woman! Blood like yours would soil the executioner’s axe. Out of my sight!”