again supported by yours, and with that help I can laugh at every evil
that the world or night may bring."

"Oh, don't excite the envy of the gods; human happiness often vexes them.
Since you left us we have passed some very, very sad days. The two poor
children of our kind Phanes--a boy as beautiful as Eros, and a little
girl as fair and rosy as a summer morning's cloud just lit up by the
sun,--came for some happy days to stay with us. Grandmother grew quite
glad and young again while looking on these little ones, and as for me I
gave them all my heart, though really it is your's and your's alone. But
hearts, you know, are wonderfully made; they're like the sun who sends
his rays everywhere, and loses neither warmth nor light by giving much,
but gives to all their due. I loved those little ones so very much. One
evening we were sitting quite alone with Theopompus in the women's room,
when suddenly we heard aloud, wild noise. The good old Knakias, our
faithful slave, just reached the door as all the bolts gave way, and,
rushing through the entrance-hall into the peristyle, the andronitis,
and so on to us, crashing the door between, came a troop of soldiers.
Grandmother showed them the letter by which Amasis secured our house from
all attack and made it a sure refuge, but they laughed the writing to
scorn and showed us on their side a document with the crown-prince's
seal, in which we were sternly commanded to deliver up Phanes' children
at once to this rough troop of men. Theopompus reproved the soldiers for
their roughness, telling them that the children came from Corinth and had
no connection with Phanes; but the captain of the troop defied and
sneered at him, pushed my grandmother rudely away, forced his way into
her own apartment, where among her most precious treasures, at the head
of her own bed, the two children lay sleeping peacefully, dragged them
out of their little beds and took them in an open boat through the cold
night-air to the royal city. In a few days we heard the boy was dead.