“Avil,” spoke Belshazzar, eying his minister, “I believe that the gods have set in your breast no heart, but a block of iron; you may persuade me to many things, but not to slay Darius until I stand in sorer need than I stand to-day.”
“Ah! well,” answered the pontiff, smiling somewhat uneasily, “it is all one whether he lives or dies. My watchers are everywhere; not a letter to or from Susa fails of interception. He is harmless in Babylon. Let us delay the envoy as long as we may peaceably. If he demands to be sent home and seems to know too much, there is but one thing left.”
“To clap into prison and prepare for speedy war with Cyrus?”
“The king has said!” bowed Avil.
“Very good,” answered Belshazzar, not without bitterness. “I follow your wisdom; but woe to Babylon, and woe to you, if your wisdom prove but folly!”
The king had come to Borsippa with a “fifty” of war chariots, and five hundred mounted lancers. So a frightened underling reported to Imbi-Ilu, just as that pontiff was sprinkling himself with purifying water, before going to the great altar, to proffer the morning “fruit-offering.”
“He demands instant entrance,” continued the messenger, in no steady voice, “both for himself and the soldiers who follow him.”
“Armed men in Nabu’s temple precinct!” cried the high priest, dropping the palm branch with which he had been sprinkling his garments. “Never has warrior planted sandal inside our gates since the founding of the ziggurat! Surely, your wits are wandering.”
“Would to Nabu they were!” groaned the other; “but hearken!”