The Greatest Historical Novels of Georg Ebers. Georg Ebers
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unwearied, ceaseless efforts to deliver his people from a foreign yoke, and his death in the cause of freedom.
Cambyses’ madness had meanwhile taken fresh forms. After the failure of his attempt to restore Bartja, (transformed as he fancied into a bow) to his original shape, his irritability increased so frightfully that a single word, or even a look, was sufficient to make him furious. Still his true friend and counsellor, Croesus, never left him, though the king had more than once given him over to the guards for execution. But the guards knew their master; they took good care not to lay hands on the old man, and felt sure of impunity, as the king would either have forgotten his command, or repented of it by the next day, Once, however, the miserable whip bearers paid a fearful penalty for their lenity. Cambyses, while rejoicing that Croesus was saved, ordered his deliverers to be executed for disobedience without mercy.
It would be repugnant to us to repeat all the tales of barbarous cruelties, which are told of Cambyses at this insane period of his life; but we cannot resist mentioning a few which seem to us especially characteristic.
While sitting at table one day, already somewhat intoxicated, he asked Prexaspes what the Persians thought of him. The envoy, who in hopes of deadening his tormenting conscience by the performance of noble and dangerous acts, let no opportunity pass of trying to exercise a good influence over his sovereign, answered that they extolled him on every point, but thought he was too much addicted to wine.
These words, though spoken half in jest, put the king into a violent passion, and he almost shrieked: “So the Persians say, that the wine has taken away my senses, do they? on the contrary, I’ll show them that they’ve lost their own.” And as he spoke he bent his bow, took aim for a moment at Prexaspes’ eldest son, who, as cup-bearer, was standing at the back of the hall waiting for and watching every look of his sovereign, and shot him in the breast. He then gave orders that the boy’s body should be opened and examined. The arrow had pierced the centre of his heart. This delighted the senseless tyrant, and he called out with a laugh: “Now you see, Prexaspes, it’s the Persians who have lost their judgment, not I. Could any one have hit the mark better?”
Prexaspes stood there, pale and motionless, compelled to watch the horrid scene, like Niobe when chained to Sipylus. His servile spirit bowed before the ruler’s power, instead of arming his right hand with the dagger of revenge, and when the frantic king asked him the same question a second time, he actually answered, pressing his hand on his heart: “A god could not have hit the mark more exactly.”
A few weeks after this, the king went to Sais, and there was shown the rooms formerly occupied by his bride. This brought back all the old painful recollections in full force, and at the same time his clouded memory reminded him, though without any clearness of detail, that Amasis had deceived both Nitetis and himself. He cursed the dead king and furiously demanded to be taken to the temple of Neith, where his mummy was laid. There he tore the embalmed body out of its sarcophagus, caused it to be scourged, to be stabbed with pins, had the hair torn off and maltreated it in every possible way. In conclusion, and contrary to the ancient Persian religious law, which held the pollution of pure fire by corpses to be a deadly sin, he caused Amasis’ dead body to be burnt, and condemned the mummy of his first wife, which lay in a sarcophagus at Thebes, her native place, to the same fate.
On his return to Memphis, Cambyses did not shrink from personally ill-treating his wife and sister, Atossa.
He had ordered a combat of wild beasts to take place, during which, amongst other entertainments of the same kind, a dog was to fight with a young lion. The lion had conquered his antagonist, when another dog, the brother of the conquered one, broke away from his chain, attacked the lion, and with the help of the wounded dog, vanquished him.
This scene delighted Cambyses, but Kassandane and Atossa, who had been forced by the king’s command to be present, began to weep aloud.
The tyrant was astonished, and on asking the reason for their tears, received as answer from the impetuous Atossa, that the brave creature who had risked its own life to save its brother, reminded her of Bartja. She would not say by whom he had been murdered, but his murder had never been avenged.
These words so roused the king’s anger, and so goaded his conscience, that in a fit of insane fury he struck the daring woman, and might possibly have killed her, if his mother had not thrown herself into his arms and exposed her own body to his mad blows.
Her voice and action checked his rage, for he had not lost reverence for his mother; but her look of intense anger and contempt, which he clearly saw and could not forget, begot a fresh delusion in his mind. He believed from that moment, that the eyes of women had power to poison him; he started and hid himself behind his companions whenever he saw a woman, and at last commanded that all the female inhabitants of the palace at Memphis, his mother not excepted, should be sent back to Ecbatana. Araspes and Gyges were appointed to be their escort thither.
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The caravan of queens and princesses had arrived at Sais; they alighted at the royal palace. Croesus had accompanied them thus far on their way from Egypt.
Kassandane had altered very much during the last few years. Grief and suffering had worn deep lines in her once beautiful face, though they had had no power to bow her stately figure.
Atossa, on the contrary, was more beautiful than ever, notwithstanding all she had suffered. The refractory and impetuous child, the daring spirited girl, had developed into a dignified, animated and determined woman. The serious side of life, and three sad years passed with her ungovernable husband and brother, had been first-rate masters in the school of patience, but they had not been able to alienate her heart from her first love. Sappho’s friendship had made up to her in some measure for the loss of Darius.
The young Greek had become another creature, since the mysterious departure of her husband. Her rosy color and her lovely smile were both gone. But she was wonderfully beautiful, in spite of her paleness, her downcast eyelashes and languid attitude. She looked like Ariadne waiting for Theseus. Longing and expectation lay in every look, in the low tone of her voice, in her measured walk. At the sound of approaching steps, the opening of a door or the unexpected tones of a man’s voice, she would start, get up and listen, and then sink back into the old waiting, longing attitude, disappointed but not hopeless. She began to dream again, as she had been so fond of doing in her girlish days.
She was her old self only when playing with her child. Then the color came back to her cheeks, her eyes sparkled, she seemed once more to live in the present, and not only in the past or future.
Her child was everything to her. In that little one Bartja seemed to be still alive, and she could love the child with all her heart and strength, without taking one iota from her love to him. With this little creature the gods had mercifully given her an aim in life and a link with the lower world, the really precious part of which had seemed to vanish with her vanished husband. Sometimes, as she looked into her baby’s blue eyes, so wonderfully like Bartja’s, she thought: Why was not she born a boy? He would have grown more like his father from day to day, and at last, if such a thing indeed could ever be, a second Bartja would have stood before me.
But such thoughts generally ended soon in her pressing the little one closer than ever to her heart, and blaming herself for ingratitude and folly.
One day Atossa put the same idea in words, exclaiming: “If Parmys were only a boy! He would have grown up exactly like his father, and have been a second Cyrus for Persia.” Sappho smiled sadly at her friend, and covered the little one with kisses, but Kassandane said: “Be thankful to the gods, my child, for having given you a daughter. If Parmys were a boy, he would be taken from you as soon as he had reached his sixth year, to be brought up with the sons of the other Achaemenidae, but your daughter will remain your own for many years.”
Sappho trembled at the mere thought of parting from her child; she pressed its little fair curly head close to her breast, and never found, fault with her treasure again for being a girl.
Atossa’s friendship was a great comfort to her poor wounded heart. With her she could speak of Bartja as much and as often as she would, and was always certain of a kind and sympathizing listener.