"Ah! Bartja and Darius!" cried Zopyrus, seeing the two speaking in a low voice together, "there you are at your secrets again. Come to us and pass the wine-cup. By Mithras, I can truly say I never wished for death, but now I quite look forward to the black Azis, because he is going to take us all together. Zopyrus would rather die with his friends, than live without them." "But the great point is to try and explain what has really happened," said Darius. "It's all the same to me," said Zopyrus, whether I die with or without an explanation, so long as I know I am innocent and have not deserved the punishment of perjury. Try and get us some golden goblets, Bischen; the wine has no flavor out of these miserable brass mugs. Cambyses surely would not wish us to suffer from poverty in our last hours, though he does forbid our fathers and friends to visit us." "It's not the metal that the cup is made of," said Bartja, "but the wormwood of death, "that gives the wine its bitter taste." "No, really, you're quite out there," exclaimed Zopyrus. "Why I had nearly forgotten that strangling generally causes death." As he said this, he touched Gyges and whispered: "Be as cheerful as you can! don't you see that it's very hard for Bartja to take leave of this world? What were you saying, Darius?" "That I thought Oropastes' idea the only admissible one, that a Div had taken the likeness of Bartja and visited the Egyptian in order to ruin us." "Folly! I don't believe in such things." "But don't you remember the legend of the Div, who took the beautiful form of a minstrel and appeared before king Kawus?" "Of course," cried Araspes. "Cyrus had this legend so often recited at the banquets, that I know it by heart. "Kai Kawus hearkened to the words of the disguised Div and went to Masenderan, and was beaten there by the Divs and deprived of his eyesight." "But," broke in Darius, "Rustem, the great hero, came and conquered Erscheng and the other bad spirits, freed the captives and restored sight to the blind, by dropping the blood of the slaughtered Divs into their eyes. And so it will be with us, my friends! We shall be set free, and the eyes of Cambyses and of our blind and infatuated fathers will be opened to see our innocence. Listen, Bischen; if we really should be executed, go to the Magi, the Chaldwans, and Nebenchari the Egyptian, and tell them they had better not study the stars any longer, for that those very stars had proved themselves liars and deceivers to Darius." "Yes," interrupted Araspes, "I always said that dreams were the only real prophecies. Before Abradatas fell in the battle of Sardis, the peerless Panthea dreamt that she saw him pierced by a Lydian arrow." "You cruel fellow!" exclaimed Zopyrus. "Why do you remind us, that it is much more glorious to die in battle than to have our necks wrung off"