“Then, by Allat, queen of Hades,” cried Khatin, in disgust, “Cyrus is no king! Hark you! Some day I will plot treason and wear the royal cap myself. Then how many ministers will I have? Just one—an honest headsman. A king and an executioner—the one to begin, the other to finish—these are governors enough for the wide world.”
But as Khatin was running on with more wisdom, scarlet-robed torch-bearers began pouring through the gate, with the cry, “The knee! the knee! The king, the daughter of Cyrus, and the Persian envoy!”
The executioner and the eunuchs fell on their knees, to make obeisance. A vast host of guardsmen, priests, and pages came first; and Khatin asked Khanni, “They go to the Hanging Gardens?”
“Yes; the betrothal feast for Atossa will be held there. But they are late. Something has delayed the chief eunuch, and all has waited for him.”
“Yet they come at last. See his Majesty and the Persians.”
The royal party advanced, hidden by a moving hedge of steel-clad guardsmen and the shadows of fifty torches. Belshazzar was in his state, the jewelled embroideries on his robes worth the plunder of six cities. At his side in the chariot stood Darius, no longer in native dress, but in the splendid Median blue caftan. Men whispered that the Persian looked none too merry, though he seemed to be laughing at some jest from the king. Directly behind the car came a litter—all gold relief work and ivory—borne by eight of the Chaldee nobles, wherein rode Atossa and Mermaza, chief eunuch. When the torchlight flashed on her fair hair and the rose and white of her face, there was a loud shout of admiration from great and small, “A goddess! Istar come to earth! The ‘Great Lady’ is amongst us!”
Whereupon Atossa leaned from the litter, crying in her sweet, foreign Chaldee, “The Most High bless you, good people, for your praise!” At which there were more cheerings. But Atossa had sunk back on the muslin pillows, and closed her eyes to the torch-glare.
They passed down the inclined plane leading from the palace terrace; all about, outside of the red circle of the flambeaux, stretched the dim masses of the foliage of the “paradise,”—the wide park around the king’s house. Then the company came again to a rising way, and a word from Mermaza shook Atossa from her revery.
“Look!” Atossa saw before her, in the faint gloaming, the columned halls of a far-reaching temple, as it were—massive pillars curiously carved and banded, which stretched away along long colonnades, yoked together by heavy vaulting and arches. Marvel enough this would have been, even in Babylon, city of marvels, for these galleries covered a prodigious area; but they were only the beginning of the wonder. Above them, springing from their roof, was a second system of like columns, and arched above this, a third; and above this, so high that the eye grew weary of staring upward, rare Indian palms and stately cedars of Lebanon were spread against a sky dyed red by a hundred great bonfires.