"Speak then to Xerxes," Alexander replied, pointing to the wall, from which the royal portrait seemed to look down upon them with a sneer.

Callisthenes obeyed. At first his voice was unheeded; but as his apostrophe gathered force, the chatter of talk died away around him, and all eyes were turned upon him.

Calling upon the dead king by name, he magnified his power and told how he had gathered the nations to the invasion of Hellas. The failure of his attempt he attributed to the jealousy of the Gods, who would not permit destruction to fall upon the country that was to produce Alexander. He described the heroic stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae, and the victory of Salamis; and as he dwelt upon the bravery of the Greeks in the face of those overwhelming odds, the hall rang with the cheers of men who themselves knew what it was to fight and to conquer.

"By thy command, O Xerxes!" the orator cried, extending his open palm toward the portrait, "Hellas was made to blush in the flames that devoured the temples of her Gods upon the Athenian Acropolis; but the life of man is brief, while the Gods die not nor do they forget. Look down from thy chariot! Alexander, the defender and avenger of Hellas, holds thy dominions, and the nations that owned thy sway are bowed at his feet. Turn not thy face away; for the fire with which thou didst insult and offend the Gods of Hellas hath flamed across all Persia, until it hath reached thee at last!"

The rage that had been gathering in the breasts of the Macedonians at the recital of the wrongs that Greece had suffered could be repressed no longer. Clitus leaped to his feet and hurled his golden beaker at the painted face of Xerxes. In an instant the hall was in an uproar.

The company rose with one accord and turned to Alexander, shouting for revenge. To their inflamed minds it seemed as though the injuries inflicted by Xerxes were of yesterday. The contagion caught the young king, who sprang from his couch and stood gazing around him, seeking some means of satisfying the desire for vengeance that swelled his heart.

Thais had been watching his face with lips slightly parted and a strangely intent look in her eyes, as though waiting for the moment to carry into execution some project that she had formed in her mind.

While Alexander stood hesitating, she seized a blazing torch from its socket in one of the columns.

"He burned our temples--let fire be his punishment!" she whispered, thrusting the torch into Alexander's grasp.

"The Gods shall be avenged!" he cried, accepting her plan without hesitation; for the wine he had drunk and the maddening clamor of his followers had gone to his head.

He thrust the lighted torch against the draperies that hung behind him.

A cry of horror burst from the slaves and attendants as the flame caught the heavy folds and ran upward in leaping spirals; but the cry was lost in the fierce triumphant shout of the captains. Every man grasped a torch and ran to spread the conflagration. The great Hall of Xerxes was enveloped in flame and smoke so quickly that the incendiaries themselves had barely time to escape.

Rushing from the doorways with the torches in their hands, the Macedonians hastened from palace to palace, scattering destruction.

Clouds of smoke, glowing red above the leaping flames, rose over the marvellous structures that had been reared with so much toil. Tower and terrace, porch and portico, were transformed into roaring furnaces in whose heat the great columns cracked and fell with a noise like the rumbling of thunder. The lofty ceilings crashed down upon wonders of art and precious fabrics. The plates of beaten gold that lined the walls melted and ran into crevices which opened in the marble floor.

Of the slaves, some perished in the flames; others fled with booty snatched from the ruin; still others ran wildly into the darkness, crying that the Macedonians were preparing to put to the sword all who dwelt in the pleasant valley.

The banqueters, driven back by the heat, watched the conflagration with shouts of joy while it slowly burned itself out, leaving only the gaunt and blackened skeletons of the group of palaces that had been the delight of the Great Kings.

Thais stood beside Ptolemy, beneath the wide branches of an oak where the glare of the flames she had kindled threw her figure into strong relief against the blackness. She held herself proudly erect, and a slight smile curved her lips as she saw the banners of flame leap upward toward the stars.

"Why did you do it?" the Macedonian asked, with an accent of respect that seemed out of place in a camp where women were held so cheap.

"I did it because of a promise that I gave to Orontobates when I was a captive in Halicarnassus," Thais replied. "I like to keep my word."

Something in her tone prevented the soldier, bold as he was, from asking her what the promise had been. She had already taught him when to remain silent, and he had learned that he must either submit or abandon hope of winning her. As he stood, drinking in her beauty, revealed in a new aspect by the firelight, he was puzzled to see her head droop, while two tears slowly gathered upon her lashes.

"Farewell, Chares, my lover!" she was saying to herself. "Upon thy funeral pyre my heart, too, is turning to ashes!"

"Thais," Ptolemy whispered, moved by her emotion without knowing its cause, "do not forget that I love thee!"

"I do not forget," she replied, "nor have I forgotten another promise that I made; for I think the Gods have sent thee to me. To-morrow I will be thy wife; and when this war has reached its end, thou shalt reign in Alexandria over Egypt with me at thy side."

"Thais!" Ptolemy exclaimed, clasping her at last in his arms.

So Thais, the Athenian dancing girl, kept her pledge; but through the length and breadth of the land ran the news that the home of the Great Kings had been laid in ashes, and men knew that, though Darius still lived, his power indeed was gone forever.

CHAPTER LI

AMID FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRE

Clearchus and Artemisia were walking in the garden of their home in Alexandria. Between the trunks of the trees, at a distance, they could see the roofs and towers of the populous city, and across the blue water, which began where the slopes of verdure ended, they could watch the white sails of ships bringing trade from all parts of the world.

Ten years had passed since the palaces of Persepolis had crumbled into ashes. Alexander had been dead three years, and his body lay in the royal tomb at the mouth of the Nile, whither Ptolemy had brought it from Babylon, when the empire was divided among the Macedonian generals and he came to rule over Egypt in place of the rapacious Cleomenes.

Artemisia's figure had lost some of its girlish grace, but her blue eyes retained their clearness and her cheeks the delicate flush of her youth. Clearchus, too, was heavier than he had been when he fought among the Companions under Alexander, whom men were beginning to call "the Great."

At a turn in the path Artemisia placed her hand upon his arm and checked him. The silvery voices of children came from a sunlit glade among the shrubbery. They saw a boy of eleven years, clad in a short white tunic that left his arms and legs free, shooting with blunt arrows at a target that hung against a tree. Two little girls stood watching him, and after each shot they ran with eager laughter to find the arrow and fetch it back to him. Their fair hair gleamed in the sun. Artemisia's eyes sought those of her husband, and a smile of mother love transfigured her face.

"I am almost afraid to be so happy," she murmured.

Clearchus laughed. "You need not fear, my heart," he replied. "Do not the Gods owe us something? They are generous."

They heard a step on the gravel behind them, and Leonidas advanced with a smile and hands outstretched. He had changed little, excepting that a few gray hairs appeared at his temples and the lines of his face had deepened.

"Welcome, comrade!" Clearchus cried, running forward to meet him.

"Whence come you? What news?"

"I come from the council in Syria," Leonidas answered, "and as for news, there has been another division of the world."

"And Ptolemy?" Clearchus asked anxiously.

"He retains Egypt," the Spartan said. "Antipater is regent, with Macedonia and all Greece; Seleucus gets the satrapy of Babylon; and Antigonus, Susiana, besides what he had."

"I hope we shall have peace at last," Artemisia said, glancing toward the children.

"We shall have peace here, at all events," Leonidas said grimly. "None of the generals is desirous of sharing the fate of Perdiccas."

They sat down beneath a vine-grown trellis while Leonidas told them of the events that had led to the new distribution of the empire, describing the jealousies of the leaders and the ferment of revolt that was working in Greece.

"When will they stop killing each other?" Artemisia said sadly. "Has not each of them more than enough without trying to rob the others?

Leave them to their quarrels, Leonidas; there is room enough for another house here beside us, and we will find you a mistress for it."

Leonidas shook his head and sipped the wine that a slave had brought for his refreshment. He knew that she referred to the site that they had reserved for Chares and Thais.

"It is too late," he replied, half regretfully. "As we have lived, so we must die."

Artemisia slipped her hand within that of Clearchus, while the Spartan followed with his eyes the glancing sails of a vessel whose prow was turned toward the north and the rugged hillsides of his native land.

Their reflections were interrupted by the children, who had tired of their play and were seeking new diversion.

"Ho! Uncle Leonidas," shouted the boy, swooping down upon the Spartan.

"Where did you come from? Tell me about the death of King Darius!"

He sat down beside Leonidas and composed himself to listen. The little girls took Artemisia prisoner and led her away to see a nest they had found, in which, they assured her, were funny little birds with no feathers on their wings. Leonidas, his eyes still on the receding ship, began the story that he had often told before. He related how the army came to Ecbatana, the gem of cities, with its seven walls each of a different color from the others, and each rising higher than the one outside it, and how they found that the Great King had fled up into the snow-capped mountains that overlook the Caspian Sea. He had with him Bessus, the treacherous; Oxathres, his own brother; Artabazus, the first nobleman of Persia, who commanded the Greek mercenaries; and a score more of the generals and viceroys who still remained constant to his fortune. He told how Darius wished to stand and fight among the rugged passes, but the others would not allow it; how Artabazus, suspecting their perfidy, besought him to trust himself to his Greeks, to which the Great King consented for the morrow; and how that night Bessus fettered him with golden chains and made him a prisoner in his litter.

The boy listened with sparkling eyes intent upon the Spartan's face, while Leonidas described how Alexander, finding the Persians ever fleeing before him, had left the foot-soldiers behind and struck out with the Companions across the desert to intercept them. The lad held his breath as he followed the desperate ride over the burning sands, where one by one the horses stumbled and fell, gasping, until only seventy riders remained. His cheeks flushed when he heard how a soldier had brought water to Alexander in his helmet, and how the young king, thirsty as he was, refused to moisten his lips because there was not enough for all.

Then came the charge of the seventy weary Macedonians in the gray of the morning upon the camp of the sleeping Persians and the panic-stricken flight of the cowardly army before them, too frightened even to look back. And there they found the Great King lying in his litter, stabbed through and through by the order of Bessus, who had hoped thus to win the favor of Alexander.