These signs of sorrow softened the old man's indignation. His love was
strong enough to embrace the guilty as well as the innocent Bartja, and
taking the young man's right hand in both his own, he looked at him as a
father would who finds his son, wounded on the battle-field, and said:
"Tell me, my poor, infatuated boy, how was it that your pure heart fell
away so quickly to the evil powers?"

Bartja shuddered. The blood came back to his face, but these words cut
him to the heart. For the first time in his life his belief in the
justice of the gods forsook him.

He called himself the victim of a cruel, inexorable fate, and felt like a
bunted animal driven to its last gasp and hearing the dogs and sportsmen
fast coming nearer. He had a sensitive, childlike nature, which did not
yet know how to meet the hard strokes of fate. His body and his physical
courage had been hardened against bodily and physical enemies; but his
teachers had never told him how to meet a hard lot in life; for Cambyses
and Bartja seemed destined only to drink out of the cup of happiness and
joy.

Zopyrus could not bear to see his friend in tears. He reproached the old
man angrily with being unjust and severe. Gyges' looks were full of
entreaty, and Araspes stationed himself between the old man and the
youth, as if to ward off the blame of the elder from cutting deeper into
the sad and grieved heart of the younger man. Darius, however, after
having watched them for some time, came up with quiet deliberation to
Croesus, and said: "You continue to distress and offend one another, and
yet the accused does not seem to know with what offence he is charged,
nor will the accuser hearken to his defence. Tell us, Croesus, by the
friendship which has subsisted between us up to this clay, what has