Nightfall again; and again a feast at the same hour when one year earlier Belshazzar had given a banquet to the daughter of Cyrus and proclaimed her his prospective bride. At early dawn all Babylonians had awakened to eat, drink, and make merry. Every beer-house had reëchoed with drunken revel. No business in the bazaars, no priests chanting their litanies on the temple-towers. The great merchants had thrown open their doors to the most distant friends, who were welcome to enter and quaff a deep-bellied flagon. By noon half Babylon was in drink: drunken sailors roaring along the quays, drunken priestesses at their orgies with tipsy youths in the groves of Istar, drunken soldiers splashing their liquor as they stood guard on walls and gates. Cyrus was gone. The siege was at an end. What need of watch and ward? One would have thought the city had forgotten Marduk and Samas, to adore the one god, Wine! As the first twilight spread, the multitudes commenced to surge through the open gates of the palace. Long before the proper feast was prepared the royal stewards had brought skins of the rarest vintage from the palace cellars, and emptied them into the great silver mixing-bowls which stood in every corner of the vast courts, with a busy eunuch by each, handing forth goblets to great and small—for all Babylon could call itself Belshazzar’s guest that night. The walls of the courts had been hung with gay stuffs curiously embroidered; over each of the courts rippled a vast awning of Sidonian purple, hung by a clever system of pulleys, making the huge space one banqueting chamber. And under this canopy, as everywhere else in the king’s house,—save the inner harem,—jostled the shouting, rioting multitude, maddened with drink: ass-drivers, gardeners, artisans, women, children even, pressing around the eunuchs and stretching forth eager hands for the goblets, with only a single cry: “Wine! Wine! More! More!” In and out through this human whirlpool ploughed Khatin the giant headsman; other pates might whirl with the cheer, not his, though none had seen the bottom of more cups that night than he. “One year to-night,” the executioner was braying, “since the betrothal feast; you recall your dear friend Khanni was with us then. Pity his Majesty bade me end his services four months since!” “Peace; speak not of it!” groaned the eunuch Nabua, who dragged, very tipsy, on Khatin’s arm. “Silence, then, if you wish. Well, to-morrow I trust to say farewell to those Persian noblemen taken in the sally—stout lads, all of them!” “But Darius has slid through your clutch,” hiccoughed Nabua, snatching a honey-cake from a table, grasping and swallowing almost as one act. “Darius? Yes, all the gods have won a grudge from me by that. But I shall be repaid. Avil-Marduk will have a free course against the Jews now. I doubt not to chaffer with that surly oaf, old Daniel, before another Sabbath.” “Sure of this?”