“Peace, your Majesty,” interposed Avil, abruptly. “Will you raise all Babylon in an uproar? Believe me, Daniel is a power, even as against you, my king. Men may think him old, honest, unsuspecting; but I know better. He is rich, like all his accursed race. The city folk worship him. Imbi-Ilu can rally half the priesthoods, as many as are jealous of Bel-Marduk, in his behalf. And again beware; for raise a wind that will blow into the Persian envoy’s ears that you are seeking the maid, and when will he trust oath of yours again? I pray all the gods he hear nothing of Mermaza’s rash blunder this day.”
“The envoy!” grunted Belshazzar. “What does he see and know while in Babylon? No bat is blinder to all save his sport.”
“The king is mistaken,” admonished Avil, smoothly, “if he thinks Darius utterly witless. I have watched him, and I boast to be a judge of men. When not in liquor, he is deep and crafty beyond appearance. Do nothing to offend him till the proper time; and as for the Jew’s daughter, let the king wait. Mermaza can find many another as likely maid, sold in the market for twenty shekels.”
“No, by Samas!” asserted Belshazzar, testily. “I wish for no fowls out of that flock. Whatsoever I once set my heart on, that will I possess, though all the plague-demon’s sprites rage round me. I have sworn to gain the girl, and were she ten times less comely than she is, no power of man shall say to the king of Babylon ‘nay.’”
Avil coughed, it seemed derisively, and spoke in an authoritative tone wondrously disrespectful to a crowned monarch:—
“Lord, we have many things to think of before wasting time or sleep on a slip of a girl. When the father is snug in the palace prison, we can give thought to the child. Yet give me time, your Majesty, and I will weave a net for Daniel, and his daughter, too; but make no new attempt on her for the present. Again I repeat, nothing to offend the Persian.”
“Now, by Allat’s fiends!” cursed Belshazzar, “must it be the Persian, always the Persian? I grow weary dissembling; yet I do it well?”
“Excellently well,” soothed Avil, who felt he might be stepping too far. “But consider once more: touch Daniel before there is proper occasion, or outrage the envoy, and abroad we have war with Cyrus, and at home all Babylon buzzing about the palace in revolt. Gently, my king, gently! Remember that your government is not two months old.”
“Daniel the Jew!” repeated Belshazzar; “the Jew! I do not know why I hate that race so utterly. They are a stiff-necked people, sticking to their Jehovah-worship like flies at the mouth of a wine-jar. And the Persians are like them. Oh, that they all had one neck, that Khatin might cut it!”
“Let the king’s liver be at peace,” began Mermaza, comforting; but he took a step backward. Darius, behind a shrub, had been unable to stir hand or foot from the beginning of the conversation, for the least sound would have betrayed. His cheeks had flushed hot when he heard his own name spoken; he had swelled with utter wrath when he knew that the pledge touching Ruth had been given only to be conveniently broken. Mermaza’s arm swung at a careless gesture, and brushed the Persian’s face. A shout, and Avil and Belshazzar had leaped upon the eavesdropper before he could escape in the dark.