had listened to these remarks with deep attention. "Yet had we in our
armies your countryman, the brave Demaratus."

"But, if I have heard rightly, ye too often disdained his counsel.
Had he been listened to there had been neither a Salamis nor a
Plataea.[24] Yet Demaratus himself had been too long a stranger to
Greece, and he knew little of any state save that of Sparta. Lives he
still?"

"Surely yes, in honour and renown; little less than the son of Darius
himself."

"And what reward would Xerxes bestow on one of greater influence
than Demaratus; on one who has hitherto conquered every foe, and now
beholds before him the conquest of Greece herself?"

"If such a man were found," answered the Persian, "let his thought
run loose, let his imagination rove, let him seek only how to find a
fitting estimate of the gratitude of the king and the vastness of the
service."

Pausanias shaded his brow with his hand, and mused a few moments; then
lifting his eyes to the Persian's watchful but composed countenance,
he said, with a slight smile--

"Hard is it, O Persian, when the choice is actually before him, for a
man to renounce his country. There have been hours within this very
day when my desires swept afar from Sparta, from all Hellas, and
rested on the tranquil pomp of Oriental Satrapies. But now, rude and
stern parent though Sparta be to me, I feel still that I am her son;