“Come, little mistress, in five years Babylon will have become dearer to you than Susa. What is strange, we hate.”
“So has said Darius; but I would answer this: When Belshazzar can love a maid above a lion, I will try to think otherwise.”
“But at the Gardens last night was he not all courtesy and compliment? Doubtless his manners are not those of your august father—”
“Silence!” she commanded, truly wrathful now, “speak not of Belshazzar and of Cyrus in one breath! Where is the king worthy to sit beside my father? I say nothing of his power,—but of his tenderness, his mercy. And Belshazzar,”—some force seemed tugging the name across her teeth,—“no doubt he can speak glozing words; but his heart is dark, and under the softest of his speeches you can hear the muzzled roarings of the lion.”
The good eunuch began to whimper in sympathy, a great tear on each cheek.
“Alas! lady, all is as you say. Yet you will not curse Cyrus who sent you?”
Atossa’s eyes were dry; she held her head up proudly.
“No, I may not curse. I am born a king’s daughter,—and therefore a slave,—a slave to the welfare of my people. Better that I should dash my wings and beat out my little life against the bars of this cage, than that thousands of our Aryan sword-hands pour out their blood in war with Babylon. I am but a maid; but I am wise enough to know this,—king’s child and peasant have alike one heart, and in it the same pains. Happy for the world, if the grief of the first may spare grief to the thousand others!”
“The world says, ‘Let the thousand suffer, that the one may laugh.’”
Atossa threw back her head again. “Yes—so Belshazzar would say, but not Cyrus; therefore, my father is a great king, and Ahura prospers him.”