y inflict."

"You are right," answered the blind woman, "but I feel only too well that
my influence over him is but small. He has been so much accustomed to
have his own will, that he will follow no advice, even if it come from
his mother's lips."

"But he must at least hear it," answered Croesus, "and that is much, for
even if he refuse to obey, your counsels will, like divine voices,
continue to make themselves heard within him, and will keep him back from
many a sinful act. I will remain your ally in this matter; for, as
Cambyses' dying father appointed me the counsellor of his son in word and
deed, I venture occasionally a bold word to arrest his excesses. Ours is
the only blame from which he shrinks: we alone can dare to speak our
opinion to him. Let us courageously do our duty in this our office: you,
moved by love to Persia and your son, and I by thankfulness to that great
man to whom I owe life and freedom, and whose son Cambyses is. I know
that you bemoan the manner in which he has been brought up; but such late
repentance must be avoided like poison. For the errors of the wise the
remedy is reparation, not regret; regret consumes the heart, but the
effort to repair an error causes it to throb with a noble pride."

"In Egypt," said Nitetis, "regret is numbered among the forty-two deadly
sins. One of our principal commandments is, 'Thou shalt not consume thine
heart.'"

[In the Ritual of the Dead (indeed in almost every Papyrus of the
Dead) we meet with a representation of the soul, whose heart is
being weighed and judged. The speech made by the soul is called the
negative justification, in which she assures the 42 judges of the
dead, that she has not committed the 42 deadly sins which she
enumerates. This justification is doubly interesting because it
contains nearly the entire moral law of Moses, which last, apart
from all national peculiarities and habits of mind, seems to contain
the quintessence of human morality--and this we find ready
paragraphed in our negative justification. Todtenbuch ed. Lepsius.
125. We cannot discuss this question philosophically here, but the
law of Pythagoras, who borrowed so much from Egypt, and the contents
of which are the same, speaks for our view. It is similar in form
to the Egyptian.]

"There you remind me," said Croesus "that I have undertaken to arrange
for your instruction in the Persian customs, religion and language. I had