“Your slave’s ears hear the first part of your message with joy,”—Hiram’s smile never grew broader,—“the second part, which my Lord speaks in anger,—I will forget.”
“Go! go!” ordered the orator, furiously. He clapped his hands. Bias reëntered.
“Tell the constables I don’t need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes hither again, do you and the other slaves beat him till there is not a whole spot left on his body.”
Hiram’s genuflexion was worthy of Xerxes’s court.
“My Lord, as always,” was his parting compliment, “has shown himself exceeding wise.”
Thus the Oriental went. In what a mood Democrates passed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing Æschylus’s song of the Furies. He could not silence it.
“With scourge and with ban
We prostrate the man
Who with smooth-woven wile
And a fair-facèd smile