She turned the question upon the queen.
"You must have seen Zoroaster very often before he left Shushan," she said.

"You know him so well." "Yes--every one knew him.

He was the favourite of the court, with his beauty and his courage and his strange affection for that old--for the old Hebrew prophet.

That is why Cambyses sent them both away," added she with a light laugh.

"They were far too good, both of them, to be endured among the doings of those times." Atossa spoke readily enough of Cambyses.