THE old princess Sisygambis beheld two simply-dressed and armed Greek gentlemen enter her tent side by side, looking much as any soldiers hired into the Persian force had looked in her eyes. Yet one of these must be the terrible warrior who had twice overthrown the hosts of the Eastern Empire, and at whose mercy they all lay. How would he treat her — an aged woman, who had known little gentleness or courtesy even from those who were nearest and closest to her? She could only drop on her face at the feet of the tallest.

But the tallest drew back, and her attendants hastily pointed to the lesser man, whose fair young face, so full of gentleness and pity, had seemed to her no visage for king or conqueror; and he, stepping forward to raise her from the ground, said gently, “Be not dismayed, mother; for Hephaestion is Alexander’s other self.” Never had the poor old lady experienced the generous courtesy she met with from the stranger, and a relation almost of mother and son sprang up between them.*