Thus the messengers came to Queen Candace and they laid before her the letter of Alexander, and his gifts, and told how she had been honoured by the wealth given to her messengers, and besought her to meet the Lord of the Greeks, but she would not, for she knew the double mind of Porus, and would not adventure herself where she could meet him, yet was she willing to please Alexander, so she sent again her messengers, and richer gifts than before, and a letter praising his knighthood and his valour, and the power of his gods. Now these were her gifts, a crown of gold set with a hundred precious stones, and two hundred and ten chains of red gold, and thirty rich goblets carved with pelicans and parrots, five Ethiopian slaves of one age, a rhinoceros, a thousand beryls in caskets of ebon-wood, and four elephants to carry this wealth, and on the back of each was the skin of a spotted panther, rich and precious. So the messengers went their way, and with them Queen Candace sent a cunning painter, and she prayed him in private to make her a portrait of the king on parchment, noting all his shape and proportion. And it was done as she said, for Alexander received her gifts and well entreated her messengers, and sent them home; and when they came the painter brought his drawing before her, and she rejoiced, for she had longed to see what manner of man the Greek lord was, and now was her wish fulfilled.
It fell on a day that Alexander was in his tent, and one of his clerks was there with him, and as men went out and he chanced to be alone with the king, he fell on his knees before him, and besought grace. Then Alexander comforted him and bade him speak out boldly and fear not. So this clerk told the king how Porus knew that the death of Alexander was near, and that he had gathered together men from all parts to slay him, and he told him how that the men of Gog and Magog were on the march from the frozen lands of the North at the pay of Porus. Then Alexander asked how this should be, and the clerk told him that he had been sent to them in years back by Darius, and that then it had been a full year’s journey, but now had they come nearer, so that one month saw the beginning and the end of the way to them, when Porus had sent him. Then the Lord of the Greeks grew wrathful and began to doubt all men, for he remembered that he should die by the hands of a friend whom he trusted, wherefore he sent messengers for Porus, and when he came he said to him: “O Porus, is not the half of my throne sufficient for thee, but thou must adventure to slay me by the hand of the outer barbarians? True knight thou art not, or thou wouldest scorn to do by another what thou durst not attempt thyself.” But Porus the king stood silent, and turned red and purple and white in turns, and then he tugged off his glove and threw it at the feet of Alexander on the ground. Then said Alexander: “O Porus, though mayhap it were better to slay thee as a traitor, yet thou hast been my fellow at board and bed, and I will meet thee as thou wishest, that at least thou shalt die as a true knight, if thou couldst not live as one.” Then he called for his page and he bade him take up the glove and put it in his helmet against the set day.