Deeply hurt at his master's failure, the Grand Almoner of Egypt hastened to his side.
'Let not your Majesty,' he said, 'struggle further for this empty honour, which is after all only a matter of muscles and sinews. In the other tests you are sure to be victor. You will conquer the lion, for have you not the sabre of the god Osiris? The Princess of Babylon is to be the prize of the king who has given proofs of the greatest intelligence; and numerous are the riddles which you have guessed. Her husband must be the most virtuous of princes. Well, were you not the favourite pupil of the Egyptian priesthood? And do you not possess the two rarest objects in the world, the bull Apis and the book of Hermes? No; you are quite safe. There is no one to dispute with you the hand of the Princess Formosante.'
'You are right,' answered the king, and seated himself on his throne.
The bow was next delivered to the King of India, who spent fifteen days in vainly trying to draw it, and when he failed as hopelessly as the King of Egypt had done before him, consoled himself with thinking that the King of Scythia would fare no better than they.
But he was wrong. The King of Scythia had passed his whole life in shooting with bows and arrows, whereas the other two kings had only begun to practise when they heard of the conditions to be fulfilled by the husband of Formosante. When therefore the Scythian monarch grasped the bow, there was an eager rustle amongst the five hundred thousand in the amphitheatre. They leaned forward with straining eyes, and held their breath like one man, as they perceived a slight movement of the bow. The king's heart beat high as he felt it quiver under his hands, but, pull as hard as he might, he could not bend it further. A sigh of disappointment swept through the audience, partly for him and partly for the princess.
'At this rate she will never be married,' they groaned.
Then the young stranger left his seat and went up to the King of Scythia.
'Do not be surprised,' he said, 'if your Majesty has not been entirely successful. These bows are made in my country, and there is a certain knack in drawing them. You have won a greater triumph in bending it even a little than I should have done in drawing it altogether.'
As he spoke he picked up an arrow and, fitting it into the string of the bow, drew, without any apparent effort, the cord to his ear, and the arrow flew out of sight beyond the barrier.
At this spectacle a shout broke from half a million throats. The walls of Babylon rang with cries of joy, and the women murmured: