If I left you now so hugely in your debt, heaven help me if I could hold up my head again for very shame." [33] Thereto Gadatas made answer, "In all things I trust you, and will trust you, for I see your heart.

But consider whether I am competent to guard all this myself.

[34] While I was at peace with the king, the inheritance I had from my father was, it may be, the fairest in all the land: it was near that mighty Babylon, and all the good things that can be gathered from a great city fell into our laps, and yet from all the trouble of it, the noise and the bustle, we could be free at once by turning our backs and coming home here.

But now that we are at war, the moment you have left us we are sure to be attacked, ourselves and all our wealth, and methinks we shall have a sorry life of it, our enemies at our elbow and far stronger than ourselves.

[35] I seem to hear some one say, why did you not think of this before you revolted?
But I answer, Cyrus, because the soul within me was stung beyond endurance by my wrongs; I could not sit and ponder the safest course, I was always brooding over one idea, always in travail of one dream, praying for the day of vengeance on the miscreant, the enemy of God and man, whose hatred never rested, once aroused, once he suspected a man, not of doing wrong, but of being better than himself.