upon a chair
and folded his hands together, as though waiting for some event. But
nothing happened; no one came to disturb him in his solitude, though he
could hear the tramping feet and the unceasing talk of the slaves and
soldiers without. In the vast palace, where thousands dwelt, where all
were feasting or talking of the coming banquet, Zoroaster was utterly
alone.

At last he rose, slowly, as though with an effort, and paced twice from
one end of the room to the other. Upon a low shelf on one side, his
garments were folded together, while his burnished cuirass and helmet
and other arms which he had not worn upon his rapid journey to Ecbatana,
hung upon nails in the wall above. He looked at all these things and
turned the clothes over piece by piece, till he had found a great dark
mantle and a black hood such as was worn in Media. These he put on, and
beneath the cloak he girded a broad, sharp knife about him. Then
wrapping himself closely round with the dark-coloured stuff and drawing
the hood over his eyes, he lifted the curtain of his door and went out,
without casting a look behind him.

In the crowd of slaves he passed unnoticed; for the hall was but dimly
lighted by a few torches, and every one's attention was upon the doings
of the day and the coming feast.

Zoroaster soon gathered from the words he heard spoken, that the banquet
had not yet begun, and he hastened to the columned porch through which
the royal party must pass on the way to the great hall which formed the
centre of the main building. Files of spearmen, in their bronze
breastplates and scarlet and blue mantles, lined the way, which was
strewn with yellow sand and myrtle leaves and roses. At every pillar
stood a huge bronze candlestick, in which a torch of wax and fir-gum
burned, and flared, and sent up a cloud of half pungent, half aromatic
smoke. Throngs of slaves and soldiers pressed close behind the lines of
spearmen, elbowing each other with loud jests and surly complaints, to
get a better place, a sea of moving, shouting, gesticulating humanity.
Zoroaster's great height and broad shoulders enabled him easily to push
to the front, and he stood there, disguised and unknown, peering between
the heads of two of his own soldiers to obtain the first view of the
procession as it came down the broad staircase at the end of the porch.

Suddenly the blast of deep-toned trumpets was heard in the distance, and
silence fell upon the great multitude.