“Poorly, poorly, kyrie.” Lampaxo looked down and fumbled her dirty chiton. Such condescension on the part of a magnate barely less than Themistocles or Aristeides was overpowering.
“Poorly? I grieve to learn it. I was informed that he was comfortably settled here until it was safe to return to Attica, and had even opened a prosperous stall in the market-place.”
“Of course, kyrie; and the trade, considering the times, is not so bad—Athena be praised—and he’s not sick in body. It’s worse, far worse. I was even on the point of going to your Lordship to state my misgivings, when your good friend, the Phœnician, fell into my company, and I found he was searching for the very thing I wanted to reveal.”
“Ah!” Democrates leaned forward and battled against his impatience,—“and what is the matter wherein I can be of service to so deserving a citizen as your husband?”
“I fear me,”—Lampaxo put her apron dutifully to her face and began to sniff,—“your Excellency won’t call him ‘deserving’ any more. Hellas knows your Excellency is patriotism itself. The fact is Phormio has ‘Medized.’ ”
“Medized!” The orator started as became an actor. “Gods and goddesses! what trust is in men if Phormio the Athenian has Medized?”
“Hear my story, mu! mu!” groaned Lampaxo. “It’s a terrible thing to accuse one’s own husband, but duty to [pg 362]Hellas is duty. Your Excellency is a merciful man, if he could only warn Phormio in private.”
“Woman,”—Democrates pulled his most consequential frown,—“Medizing is treason. On your duty as a daughter of Athens I charge you tell everything, then rely on my wisdom.”
“Certainly, kyrie, certainly,” gasped Lampaxo, and so she began a recital mingled with many moans and protestations, which Democrates dared not bid her hasten.
The good woman commenced by reminding the strategus how he had visited her and her brother Polus to question them as to the doings of the Babylonish carpet merchant, and how it had seemed plain to them that Glaucon was nothing less than a traitor. Next she proceeded to relate how her husband had enabled the criminal to fly by sea, and her own part therein—for she loudly accused herself of treason in possessing a guilty knowledge of the outlaw’s manner of escape. As for Bias, he had just now gone on a message to Megara, but Democrates would surely castigate his own slave. “Still,” wound up Lampaxo, “the traitor seemed drowned, and his treason locked up in Phorcys’s strong box, and so I said nothing about him. More’s the pity.”