“Yes, because Ahura still sends Mithra the ‘fiend-smiter,’ into the heavens, pledge of His favour; and because Cyrus, lord of the Aryans, is Cyrus still; and Darius, son of Hystaspes, is Darius still.”
“Yes, lady,” cried Ruth, still quivering, “hope is sweet; but I have long hoped, and hoped in vain; and it grows hard. To-morrow is the feast, and after the feast Belshazzar will possess us utterly.”
“The time truly is short”—Atossa’s eyes, for the first time that day shone with tears; “yet if Ahura willeth, one last moment shall yet bring low this Babylon and its most evil king.”
“But we?”
Atossa shook her head impatiently.
“We are only women, made to trust and bear. We can only wait his will.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Nightfall again; and again a feast at the same hour when one year earlier Belshazzar had given a banquet to the daughter of Cyrus and proclaimed her his prospective bride. At early dawn all Babylonians had awakened to eat, drink, and make merry. Every beer-house had reëchoed with drunken revel. No business in the bazaars, no priests chanting their litanies on the temple-towers. The great merchants had thrown open their doors to the most distant friends, who were welcome to enter and quaff a deep-bellied flagon. By noon half Babylon was in drink: drunken sailors roaring along the quays, drunken priestesses at their orgies with tipsy youths in the groves of Istar, drunken soldiers splashing their liquor as they stood guard on walls and gates. Cyrus was gone. The siege was at an end. What need of watch and ward? One would have thought the city had forgotten Marduk and Samas, to adore the one god, Wine!