"Did you see how that stunted little fellow with a snub-nose and
bandy-legs, who is as broad as he is long, showed all his teeth in a
delighted grin when I praised his steady hand? He laughs just like a
hyena, and every respectable father of a family looks on the fellow as a
god-forsaken monster; but the immortals must think him worth something to
have given him such magnificent grinders in his ugly mouth, and to have
preserved him mercifully for fifty years--for that is about the rascal's
age. If that fellow's dagger breaks he can kill his victim with those
teeth, as a fox does a duck, or smash his bones with his fist."

"But, my lord," replied Eulaeus dryly and with a certain matter-of-fact
gravity to King Euergetes--for he it was who had come with him into the
room adjoining Klea's retreat, "the dry little Egyptian with the thin
straight hair is even more trustworthy and tougher and nimbler than his
companion, and, so far, more estimable. One flings himself on his prey
with a rush like a block of stone hurled from a roof, but the other,
without being seen, strikes his poisoned fang into his flesh like an
adder hidden in the sand. The third, on whom I had set great hopes, was
beheaded the day before yesterday without my knowledge; but the pair whom
you have condescended to inspect with your own eyes are sufficient. They
must use neither dagger nor lance, but they will easily achieve their end
with slings and hooks and poisoned needles, which leave wounds that
resemble the sting of an adder. We may safely depend on these fellows."

Once more Euergetes laughed loudly, and exclaimed: What criticism!
Exactly as if these blood-hounds were tragic actors of which one could
best produce his effects by fire and pathos, and the other by the
subtlety of his conception. I call that an unprejudiced judgment. And why
should not a man be great even as a murderer? From what hangman's noose
did you drag out the neck of one, and from what headsman's block did you
rescue the other when you found them?

"It is a lucky hour in which we first see something new to us, and, by
Heracles! I never before in the whole course of my life saw such villains
as these. I do not regret having gone to see them and talked to them as
if I were their equal. Now, take this torn coat off me, and help me to
undress. Before I go to the feast I will take a hasty plunge in my bath,
for I twitch in every limb, I feel as if I had got dirty in their
company.

"There lie my clothes and my sandals; strap them on for me, and tell me
as you do it how you lured the Roman into the toils."

Klea could hear every word of this frightful conversation, and clasped
her hand over her brow with a shudder, for she found it difficult to
believe in the reality of the hideous images that it brought before her
mind. Was she awake or was she a prey to some horrid dream?

She hardly knew, and, indeed, she scarcely understood half of all she
heard till the Roman's name was mentioned. She felt as if the point of a
thin, keen knife was being driven obliquely through her brain from right
to left, as it now flashed through her mind that it was against him,
against Publius, that the wild beasts, disguised in human form, were
directed by Eulaeus, and face to face with this--the most hideous, the
most incredible of horrors--she suddenly recovered the full use of her
senses. She softly slipped close to that rift in the partition through
which the broadest beam of light fell into the room, put her ear close to
it, and drank in, with fearful attention, word for word the report made
by the eunuch to his iniquitous superior, who frequently interrupted him
with remarks, words of approval or a short laugh-drank them in, as a man
perishing in the desert drinks the loathsome waters of a salt pool.

And what she heard was indeed well fitted to deprive her of her senses,
but the more definite the facts to which the words referred that she
could overhear, the more keenly she listened, and the more resolutely she
collected her thoughts. Eulaeus had used her own name to induce the Roman
to keep an assignation at midnight in the desert close to the Apis-tombs.
He repeated the words that he had written to this effect on a tile, and
which requested Publius to come quite alone to the spot indicated, since
she dare not speak with him in the temple. Finally he was invited to
write his answer on the other side of the square of clay. As Klea heard
these words, put into her own mouth by a villain, she could have sobbed
aloud heartily with anguish, shame, and rage; but the point now was to
keep her ears wide open, for Euergetes asked his odious tool:

"And what was the Roman's answer?" Eulaeus must have handed the tile to
the king, for he laughed loudly again, and cried out:

"So he will walk into the trap--will arrive by half an hour after
midnight at the latest, and greets Klea from her sister Irene. He carries
on love-making and abduction wholesale, and buys water-bearers by the
pair, like doves in the market or sandals in a shoe maker's stall. Only
see how the simpleton writes Greek; in these few words there are two
mistakes, two regular schoolboys' blunders.

"The fellow must have had a very pleasant day of it, since he must have
been reckoning on a not unsuccessful evening--but the gods have an ugly
habit of clenching the hand with which they have long caressed their
favorites, and striking him with their fist.

"Amalthea's horn has been poured out on him today; first he snapped up,
under my very nose, my little Hebe, the Irene of Irenes, whom I hope
to-morrow to inherit from him; then he got the gift of my best Cyrenaan
horses, and at the same time the flattering assurance of my valuable
friendship; then he had audience of my fair sister--and it goes more to
the heart of a republican than you would believe when crowned heads are
graciously disposed towards him--finally the sister of his pretty
sweetheart invites him to an assignation, and she, if you and Zoe speak
the truth, is a beauty in the grand style. Now these are really too many
good things for one inhabitant of this most stingily provided world; and
in one single day too, which, once begun, is so soon ended; and justice
requires that we should lend a helping hand to destiny, and cut off the
head of this poppy that aspires to rise above its brethren; the thousands
who have less good fortune than he would otherwise have great cause to
complain of neglect."

"I am happy to see you in such good humor," said Eulaeus.

"My humor is as may be," interrupted the king. "I believe I am only
whistling a merry tune to keep up my spirits in the dark. If I were on
more familiar terms with what other men call fear I should have ample
reason to be afraid; for in the quail-fight we have gone in for I have
wagered a crown-aye, and more than that even. To-morrow only will decide
whether the game is lost or won, but I know already to-day that I would
rather see my enterprise against Philometor fail, with all my hopes of
the double crown, than our plot against the life of the Roman; for I was
a man before I was a king, and a man I should remain, if my throne, which
now indeed stands on only two legs, were to crash under my weight.

"My sovereign dignity is but a robe, though the costliest, to be sure, of
all garments. If forgiveness were any part of my nature I might easily
forgive the man who should soil or injure that--but he who comes too near
to Euergetes the man, who dares to touch this body, and the spirit it
contains, or to cross it in its desires and purposes--him I will crush
unhesitatingly to the earth, I will see him torn in pieces. Sentence is
passed on the Roman, and if your ruffians do their duty, and if the gods
accept the holocaust that I had slain before them at sunset for the
success of my project, in a couple of hours Publius Cornelius Scipio will
have bled to death.

"He is in a position to laugh at me--as a man--but I therefore--as a
man--have the right, and--as a king--have the power, to make sure that
that laugh shall be his last. If I could murder Rome as I can him how
glad should I be! for Rome alone hinders me from being the greatest of
all the great kings of our time; and yet I shall rejoice to-morrow when
they tell me Publius Cornelius Scipio has been torn by wild beasts, and
his body is so mutilated that his own mother could not recognize it more
than if a messenger were to bring me the news that Carthage had broken
the power of Rome."

Euergetes had spoken the last words in a voice that sounded like the roll
of thunder as it growls in a rapidly approaching storm, louder, deeper,
and more furious each instant. When at last he was silent Eulaeus said:
"The immortals, my lord, will not deny you this happiness. The brave
fellows whom you condescended to see and to talk to strike as certainly
as the bolt of our father Zeus, and as we have learned from the Roman's
horse-keeper where he has hidden Irene, she will no more elude your grasp
than the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.--Now, allow me to put on your
mantle, and then to call the body-guard that they may escort you as you
return to your residence."

"One thing more," cried the king, detaining Eulaeus. "There are always
troops by the Tombs of Apis placed there to guard the sacred places; may
not they prove a hindrance to your friends?"

"I have withdrawn all the soldiers and armed guards to Memphis down to
the last man," replied Eulaeus, and quartered them within the White Wall.
Early tomorrow, before you proceed to business, they will be replaced by
a stronger division, so that they may not prove a reinforcement to your
brother's troops here if things come to fighting."

"I shall know how to reward your foresight," said Euergetes as Eulaeus
quitted the room.

Again Klea heard a door open, and the sound of many hoofs on the pavement
of the court-yard, and when she went, all trembling, up to the window,
she saw Euergetes himself, and the powerfully knit horse that was led in
for him. The tyrant twisted his hand in the mane of the restless and
pawing steed, and Klea thought that the monstrous mass could never mount
on to the horse's back without the aid of many men; but she was mistaken,
for with a mighty spring the giant flung himself high in the air and on
to the horse, and then, guiding his panting steed by the pressure of his
knees alone, he bounded out of the prison-yard surrounded by his splendid
train.

For some minutes the court-yard remained empty, then a man hurriedly
crossed it, unlocked the door of the room where Klea was, and informed
her that he was a subaltern under Glaucus, and had brought her a message
from him.

"My lord," said the veteran soldier to the girl, "bid me greet you, and
says that he found neither the Roman Publius Scipio, nor his friend the
Corinthian at home. He is prevented from coming to you himself; he has
his hands full of business, for soldiers in the service of both the kings
are quartered within the White Wall, and all sorts of squabbles break out
between them. Still, you cannot remain in this room, for it will shortly
be occupied by a party of young officers who began the fray. Glaucus
proposes for your choice that you should either allow me to conduct you
to his wife or return to the temple to which you are attached. In the
latter case a chariot shall convey you as far as the second tavern in
Khakem on the borders of the desert-for the city is full of drunken
soldiery. There you may probably find an escort if you explain to the
host who you are. But the chariot must be back again in less than an
hour, for it is one of the king's, and when the banquet is over there may
be a scarcity of chariots."

"Yes--I will go back to the place I came from," said Klea eagerly,
interrupting the messenger. "Take me at once to the chariot."

"Follow me, then," said the old man.

"But I have no veil," observed Klea, "and have only this thin robe on.
Rough soldiers snatched my wrapper from my face, and my cloak from off my
shoulders."

"I will bring you the captain's cloak which is lying here in the
orderly's room, and his travelling-hat too; that will hide your face with
its broad flap. You are so tall that you might be taken for a man, and
that is well, for a woman leaving the palace at this hour would hardly
pass unmolested. A slave shall fetch the things from your temple
to-morrow. I may inform you that my master ordered me take as much care
of you as if you were his own daughter. And he told me too--and I had
nearly forgotten it--to tell you that your sister was carried off by the
Roman, and not by that other dangerous man, you would know whom he meant.
Now wait, pray, till I return; I shall not be long gone."

In a few minutes the guard returned with a large cloak in which he
wrapped Klea, and a broad-brimmed travelling-hat which she pressed down
on her head, and he then conducted her to that quarter of the palace
where the king's stables were. She kept close to the officer, and was
soon mounted on a chariot, and then conducted by the driver--who took her
for a young Macedonian noble, who was tempted out at night by some
assignation--as far as the second tavern on the road back to the
Serapeum.




CHAPTER XIX.

While Klea had been listening to the conversation between Euergetes and
Eulaeus, Cleopatra had been sitting in her tent, and allowing herself to
be dressed with no less care than on the preceding evening, but in other
garments.

It would seem that all had not gone so smoothly as she wished during the
day, for her two tire-women had red eyes. Her lady-in-waiting, Zoe, was
reading to her, not this time from a Greek philosopher but from a Greek
translation of the Hebrew Psalms: a discussion as to their poetic merit
having arisen a few days previously at the supper-table. Onias, the
Israelite general, had asserted that these odes might be compared with
those of Alcman or of Pindar, and had quoted certain passages that had
pleased the queen. To-day she was not disposed for thought, but wanted
something strange and out of the common to distract her mind, so she
desired Zoe to open the book of the Hebrews, of which the translation was
considered by the Hellenic Jews in Alexandria as an admirable work--nay,
even as inspired by God himself; it had long been known to her through
her Israelite friends and guests.

Cleopatra had been listening for about a quarter of an hour to Zoe's
reading when the blast of a trumpet rang out on the steps which led up
her tent, announcing a visitor of the male sex. The queen glanced angrily
round, signed to her lady to stop reading, and exclaimed:

"I will not see my husband now! Go, Thais, and tell the eunuchs on the
steps, that I beg Philometor not to disturb me just now. Go on, Zoe."

Ten more psalms had been read, and a few verses repeated twice or thrice
by Cleopatra's desire, when the pretty Athenian returned with flaming
cheeks, and said in an excited tone:

"It is not your husband, the king, but your brother Euergetes, who asks
to speak with you."

"He might have chosen some other hour," replied Cleopatra, looking round
at her maid. Thais cast down her eyes, and twitched the edge of her robe
between her fingers as she addressed her mistress; but the queen, whom
nothing could escape that she chose to see, and who was not to-day in the
humor for laughing or for letting any indiscretion escape unreproved,
went on at once in an incensed and cutting tone, raising her voice to a
sharp pitch:

"I do not choose that my messengers should allow themselves to be
detained, be it by whom it may--do you hear! Leave Me this instant and go
to your room, and stay there till I want you to undress me this evening.
Andromeda--do you hear, old woman?--you can bring my brother to me, and
he will let you return quicker than Thais, I fancy. You need not leer at
yourself in the glass, you cannot do anything to alter your wrinkles. My
head-dress is already done. Give me that linen wrapper, Olympias, and
then he may come! Why, there he is already! First you ask permission,
brother, and then disdain to wait till it is given you."

"Longing and waiting," replied Euergetes, "are but an ill-assorted
couple. I wasted this evening with common soldiers and fawning
flatterers; then, in order to see a few noble countenances, I went into
the prison, after that I hastily took a bath, for the residence of your
convicts spoils one's complexion more, and in a less pleasant manner,
than this little shrine, where everything looks and smells like
Aphrodite's tiring-room; and now I have a longing to hear a few good
words before supper-time comes."

"From my lips?" asked Cleopatra.

"There are none that can speak better, whether by the Nile or the
Ilissus."

"What do you want of me?"

"I--of you?"

"Certainly, for you do not speak so prettily unless you want something."

"But I have already told you! I want to hear you say something wise,
something witty, something soul-stirring."

"We cannot call up wit as we would a maid-servant. It comes unbidden, and
the more urgently we press it to appear the more certainly it remains
away."

"That may be true of others, but not of you who, even while you declare
that you have no store of Attic salt, are seasoning your speech with it.
All yield obedience to grace and beauty, even wit and the sharp-tongued
Momus who mocks even at the gods."

"You are mistaken, for not even my own waiting-maids return in proper
time when I commission them with a message to you."

"And may we not to be allowed to sacrifice to the Charites on the way to
the temple of Aphrodite?"

"If I were indeed the goddess, those worshippers who regarded my
hand-maidens as my equals would find small acceptance with me."

"Your reproof is perfectly just, for you are justified in requiring that
all who know you should worship but one goddess, as the Jews do but one
god. But I entreat you do not again compare yourself to the brainless
Cyprian dame. You may be allowed to do so, so far as your grace is
concerned; but who ever saw an Aphrodite philosophizing and reading
serious books? I have disturbed you in grave studies no doubt; what is
the book you are rolling up, fair Zoe?"

"The sacred book of the Jews, Sire," replied Zoe; "one that I know you do
not love."

And you--who read Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, and Plato--do you like it?"
asked Euergetes.

"I find passages in it which show a profound knowledge of life, and
others of which no one can dispute the high poetic flight," replied
Cleopatra. "Much of it has no doubt a thoroughly barbarian twang, and it
is particularly in the Psalms--which we have now been reading, and which
might be ranked with the finest hymns--that I miss the number and rhythm
of the syllables, the observance of a fixed metre--in short, severity of
form. David, the royal poet, was no less possessed by the divinity when
he sang to his lyre than other poets have been, but he does not seem to
have known that delight felt by our poets in overcoming the difficulties
they have raised for themselves. The poet should slavishly obey the laws
he lays down for himself of his own free-will, and subordinate to them
every word, and yet his matter and his song should seem to float on a
free and soaring wing. Now, even the original Hebrew text of the Psalms
has no metrical laws."

"I could well dispense with them," replied Euergetes; "Plato too
disdained to measure syllables, and I know passages in his works which
are nevertheless full of the highest poetic beauty. Besides, it has been
pointed out to me that even the Hebrew poems, like the Egyptian, follow
certain rules, which however I might certainly call rhetorical rather
than poetical. The first member in a series of ideas stands in antithesis
to the next, which either re-states the former one in a new form or sets
it in a clearer light by suggesting some contrast. Thus they avail
themselves of the art of the orator--or indeed of the painter--who brings
a light color into juxtaposition with a dark one, in order to increase
its luminous effect. This method and style are indeed not amiss, and that
was the least of all the things that filled me with aversion for this
book, in which besides, there is many a proverb which may be pleasing to
kings who desire to have submissive subjects, and to fathers who would
bring up their sons in obedience to themselves and to the laws. Even
mothers must be greatly comforted by them,--who ask no more than that
their children may get through the world without being jostled or pushed,
and unmolested if possible, that they may live longer than the oaks or
ravens, and be blessed with the greatest possible number of descendants.
Aye! these ordinances are indeed precious to those who accept them, for
they save them the trouble of thinking for themselves. Besides, the great
god of the Jews is said to have dictated all that this book contains to
its writers, just as I dictate to Philippus, my hump-backed secretary,
all that I want said. They regard everyone as a blasphemer and desecrator
who thinks that anything written in that roll is erroneous, or even
merely human. Plato's doctrines are not amiss, and yet Aristotle had
criticised them severely and attempted to confute them. I myself incline
to the views of the Stagyrite, you to those of the noble Athenian, and
how many good and instructive hours we owe to our discussions over this
difference of opinion! And how amusing it is to listen when the
Platonists on the one hand and the Aristotelians on the other, among the
busy threshers of straw in the Museum at Alexandria, fall together by the
ears so vehemently that they would both enjoy flinging their metal cups
at each others' heads--if the loss of the wine, which I pay for, were not
too serious to bear. We still seek for truth; the Jews believe they
possess it entirely.

"Even those among them who most zealously study our philosophers believe
this; and yet the writers of this book know of nothing but actual
present, and their god--who will no more endure another god as his equal
than a citizen's wife will admit a second woman to her husband's
house--is said to have created the world out of nothing for no other
purpose but to be worshipped and feared by its inhabitants.

"Now, given a philosophical Jew who knows his Empedocles--and I grant
there are many such in Alexandria, extremely keen and cultivated
men--what idea can he form in his own mind of 'creation out of nothing?'
Must he not pause to think very seriously when he remembers the
fundamental axiom that 'out of nothing, nothing can come,' and that
nothing which has once existed can ever be completely annihilated? At any
rate the necessary deduction must be that the life of man ends in that
nothingness whence everything in existence has proceeded. To live and to
die according to this book is not highly profitable. I can easily
reconcile myself to the idea of annihilation, as a man who knows how to
value a dreamless sleep after a day brimful of enjoyment--as a man who if
he must cease to be Euergetes would rather spring into the open jaws of
nothingness--but as a philosopher, no, never!"

"You, it is true," replied the queen, "cannot help measuring all and
everything by the intellectual standard exclusively; for the gods, who
endowed you with gifts beyond a thousand others, struck with blindness or
deafness that organ which conveys to our minds any religious or moral
sentiment. If that could see or hear, you could no more exclude the
conviction that these writings are full of the deepest purport than I
can, nor doubt that they have a powerful hold on the mind of the reader.

"They fetter their adherents to a fixed law, but they take all bitterness
out of sorrow by teaching that a stern father sends us suffering which is
represented as being sometimes a means of education, and sometimes a
punishment for transgressing a hard and clearly defined law. Their god,
in his infallible but stern wisdom, sets those who cling to him on an
evil and stony path to prove their strength, and to let them at last
reach the glorious goal which is revealed to them from the beginning."

"How strange such words as these sound in the mouth of a Greek,"
interrupted Euergetes. "You certainly must be repeating them after the
son of the Jewish high-priest, who defends the cause of his cruel god
with so much warmth and skill."

"I should have thought," retorted Cleopatra, "that this overwhelming
figure of a god would have pleased you, of all men; for I know of no
weakness in you. Quite lately Dositheos, the Jewish centurion--a very
learned man--tried to describe to my husband the one great god to whom
his nation adheres with such obstinate fidelity, but I could not help
thinking of our beautiful and happy gods as a gay company of amorous
lords and pleasure-loving ladies, and comparing them with this stern and
powerful being who, if only he chose to do it, might swallow them all up,
as Chronos swallowed his own children."

"That," exclaimed Euergetes, "is exactly what most provokes me in this
superstition. It crushes our light-hearted pleasure in life, and whenever
I have been reading the book of the Hebrews everything has come into my
mind that I least like to think of. It is like an importunate creditor
that reminds us of our forgotten debts, and I love pleasure and hate an
importunate reminder. And you, pretty one, life blooms for you--"

"But I," interrupted Cleopatra, "I can admire all that is great; and does
it not seem a bold and grand thing even to you, that the mighty idea that
it is one single power that moves and fills the world, should be freely
and openly declared in the sacred writings of the Jews--an idea which the
Egyptians carefully wrap up and conceal, which the priests of the Nile
only venture to divulge to the most privileged of those who are initiated
into their mysteries, and which--though the Greek philosophers indeed
have fearlessly uttered it--has never been introduced by any Hellene into
the religion of the people? If you were not so averse to the Hebrew
nation, and if you, like my husband and myself, had diligently occupied
yourself with their concerns and their belief you would be juster to them
and to their scriptures, and to the great creating and preserving spirit,
their god--"

"You are confounding this jealous and most unamiable and ill-tempered
tyrant of the universe with the Absolute of Aristotle!" cried Euergetes;
"he stigmatises most of what you and I and all rational Greeks require
for the enjoyment of life as sin--sin upon sin. And yet if my easily
persuadable brother governed at Alexandria, I believe the shrewd priests
might succeed in stamping him as a worshipper of that magnified
schoolmaster, who punishes his untutored brood with fire and torment."

"I cannot deny," replied Cleopatra, "that even to me the doctrine of the
Jews has something very fearful in it, and that to adopt it seems to me
tantamount to confiscating all the pleasures of life.--But enough of such
things, which I should no more relish as a daily food than you do. Let us
rejoice in that we are Hellenes, and let us now go to the banquet. I fear
you have found a very unsatisfactory substitute for what you sought in
coming up here."

"No--no. I feel strangely excited to-day, and my work with Aristarchus
would have led to no issue. It is a pity that we should have begun to
talk of that barbarian rubbish; there are so many other subjects more
pleasing and more cheering to the mind. Do you remember how we used to
read the great tragedians and Plato together?"

"And how you would often interrupt our tutor Agatharchides in his
lectures on geography, to point out some mistake! Did you prosecute those
studies in Cyrene?"

"Of course. It really is a pity, Cleopatra, that we should no longer live
together as we did formerly. There is no one, not even Aristarchus, with
whom I find it more pleasant and profitable to converse and discuss than
with you. If only you had lived at Athens in the time of Pericles, who
knows if you might not have been his friend instead of the immortal
Aspasia. This Memphis is certainly not the right place for you; for a few
months in the year you ought to come to Alexandria, which has now risen
to be superior to Athens."

"I do not know you to-day!" exclaimed Cleopatra, gazing at her brother in
astonishment. "I have never heard you speak so kindly and brotherly since
the death of my mother. You must have some great request to make of us."

"You see how thankless a thing it is for me to let my heart speak for
once, like other people. I am like the boy in the fable when the wolf
came! I have so often behaved in an unbrotherly fashion that when I show
the aspect of a brother you think I have put on a mask. If I had had
anything special to ask of you I should have waited till to-morrow, for
in this part of the country even a blind beggar does not like to refuse
his lame comrade anything on his birthday."

"If only we knew what you wish for! Philometor and I would do it more
than gladly, although you always want something monstrous. Our
performance to-morrow will--at any rate--but--Zoe, pray be good enough to
retire with the maids; I have a few words to say to my brother alone."

As soon as the queen's ladies had withdrawn, she went on:

"It is a real grief to use, but the best part of the festival in honor of
your birthday will not be particularly successful, for the priests of
Serapis spitefully refuse us the Hebe about whom Lysias has made us so
curious. Asclepiodorus, it would seem, keeps her in concealment, and
carries his audacity so far as to tell us that someone has carried her
off from the temple. He insinuates that we have stolen her, and demands
her restitution in the name of all his associates."

"You are doing the man an injustice; our dove has followed the lure of a
dove-catcher who will not allow me to have her, and who is now billing
and cooing with her in his own nest. I am cheated, but I can scarcely be
angry with the Roman, for his claim was of older standing than mine."

"The Roman?" asked Cleopatra, rising from her seat and turning pale. "But
that is impossible. You are making common cause with Eulaeus, and want to
set me against Publius Scipio. At the banquet last night you showed
plainly enough your ill-feeling against him."

"You seem to feel more warmly towards him. But before I prove to you that
I am neither lying nor joking, may I enquire what has this man, this
many-named Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, to recommend him above any
handsome well-grown Macedonian, who is resolute in my cause, in the whole
corps of your body guard, excepting his patrician pride? He is as bitter
and ungenial as a sour apple, and all the very best that you--a subtle
thinker, a brilliant and cultivated philosopher--can find to say is no
more appreciated by his meanly cultivated intellect than the odes of
Sappho by a Nubian boatman."

"It is exactly for that," cried the queen, "that I value him; he is
different from all of us; we who--how shall I express myself--who always
think at second-hand, and always set our foot in the rut trodden by the
master of the school we adhere to; who squeeze our minds into the moulds
that others have carved out, and when we speak hesitate to step beyond
the outlines of those figures of rhetoric which we learned at school! You
have burst these bonds, but even your mighty spirit still shows traces of
them. Publius Scipio, on the contrary, thinks and sees and speaks with
perfect independence, and his upright sense guides him to the truth
without any trouble or special training. His society revives me like the
fresh air that I breathe when I come out into the open air from the
temple filled with the smoke of incense--like the milk and bread which a
peasant offered us during our late excursion to the coast, after we had
been living for a year on nothing but dainties."

"He has all the admirable characteristics of a child!" interrupted
Euergetes. "And if that is all that appears estimable to you in the Roman
your son may soon replace the great Cornelius."

"Not soon! no, not till he shall have grown older than you are, and a
man, a thorough man, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,
for such a man is Publius! I believe--nay, I am sure--that he is
incapable of any mean action, that he could not be false in word or even
in look, nor feign a sentiment be did not feel."

"Why so vehement, sister? So much zeal is quite unnecessary on this
occasion! You know well enough that I have my easy days, and that this
excitement is not good for you; nor has the Roman deserved that you
should be quite beside yourself for his sake. The fellow dared in my
presence to look at you as Paris might at Helen before he carried her
off, and to drink out of your cup; and this morning he no doubt did not
contradict what he conveyed to you last night with his eyes--nay, perhaps
by his words. And yet, scarcely an hour before, he had been to the
Necropolis to bear his sweetheart away from the temple of the gloomy
Serapis into that of the smiling Eros."

"You shall prove this!" cried the queen in great excitement. "Publius is
my friend--"

"And I am yours!"

"You have often proved the reverse, and now again with lies and
cheating--"

"You seem," interrupted Euergetes, "to have learned from your
unphilosophical favorite to express your indignation with extraordinary
frankness; to-day however I am, as I have said, as gentle as a kitten--"

"Euergetes and gentleness!" cried Cleopatra with a forced laugh. "No, you
only step softly like a cat when she is watching a bird, and your
gentleness covers some ruthless scheme, which we shall find out soon
enough to our cost. You have been talking with Eulaeus to-day; Eulaeus,
who fears and hates Publius, and it seems to me that you have hatched
some conspiracy against him; but if you dare to cast a single stone in
his path, to touch a single hair of his head, I will show you that even a
weak woman can be terrible. Nemesis and the Erinnyes from Alecto to
Megaera, the most terrible of all the gods, are women!"

Cleopatra had hissed rather than spoken these words, with her teeth set
with rage, and had raised her small fist to threaten her brother; but
Euergetes preserved a perfect composure till she had ceased speaking.
Then he took a step closer to her, crossed his arms over his breast, and
asked her in the deepest bass of his fine deep voice:

"Are you idiotically in love with this Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica,
or do you purpose to make use of him and his kith and kin in Rome against
me?"

Transported with rage, and without blenching in the least at her
brother's piercing gaze, she hastily retorted: "Up to this moment only
the first perhaps--for what is my husband to me? But if you go on as you
have begun I shall begin to consider how I may make use of his influence
and of his liking for me, on the shores of the Tiber."

"Liking!" cried Euergetes, and he laughed so loud and violently that Zoe,
who was listening at the tent door, gave a little scream, and Cleopatra
drew back a step. "And to think that you--the most prudent of the
prudent--who can hear the dew fall and the grass grow, and smell here in
Memphis the smoke of every fire that is lighted in Alexandria or in Syria
or even in Rome--that you, my mother's daughter, should be caught over
head and ears by a broad-shouldered lout, for all the world like a clumsy
town-girl or a wench at a loom. This ignorant Adonis, who knows so well
how to make use of his own strange and resolute personality, and of the
power that stands in his background, thinks no more of the hearts he sets
in flames than I of the earthen jar out of which water is drawn when I am
thirsty. You think to make use of him by the 'Tiber; but he has
anticipated you, and learns from you all that is going on by the Nile and
everything they most want to know in the Senate.

"You do not believe me, for no one ever is ready to believe anything that
can diminish his self-esteem--and why should you believe me? I frankly
confess that I do not hesitate to lie when I hope to gain more by untruth
than by that much-belauded and divine truth, which, according to your
favorite Plato, is allied to all earthly beauty; but it is often just as
useless as beauty itself, for the useful and the beautiful exclude each
other in a thousand cases, for ten when they coincide. There, the gong is
sounding for the third time. If you care for plain proof that the Roman,
only an hour before he visited you this morning, had our little Hebe
carried off from the temple, and conveyed to the house of Apollodorus,
the sculptor, at Memphis, you have only to come to see me in my rooms
early to-morrow after the first morning sacrifice. You will at any rate
wish to come and congratulate me; bring your children with you, as I
propose making them presents. You might even question the Roman himself
at the banquet to-day, but he will hardly appear, for the sweetest gifts
of Eros are bestowed at night, and as the temple of Serapis is closed at
sunset Publius has never yet seen his Irene in the evening. May I expect
you and the children after morning sacrifice?"

Before Cleopatra had time to answer this question another trumpet-blast
was heard, and she exclaimed: "That is Philometor, come to fetch us to
the banquet. I will ere long give the Roman the opportunity of defending
himself, though--in spite of your accusations--I trust him entirely. This
morning I asked him solemnly whether it was true that he was in love with
his friend's charming Hebe, and he denied it in his firm and manly way,
and his replies were admirable and worthy of the noblest mind, when I
ventured to doubt his sincerity. He takes truth more seriously than you
do. He regards it not only as beautiful and right to be truthful, he
says, but as prudent too; for lies can only procure us a small
short-lived advantage, as transitory as the mists of night which vanish
as soon as the sun appears, while truth is like the sunlight itself,
which as often as it is dimmed by clouds reappears again and again. And,
he says, what makes a liar so particularly contemptible in his eyes is,
that to attain his end, he must be constantly declaring and repeating the
horror he has of those who are and do the very same thing as he himself.
The ruler of a state cannot always be truthful, and I often have failed
in truth; but my intercourse with Publius has aroused much that is good
in me, and which had been slumbering with closed eyes; and if this man
should prove to be the same as all the rest of you, then I will follow
your road, Euergetes, and laugh at virtue and truth, and set the busts of
Aristippus and Strato on the pedestals where those of Zeno and
Antisthenes now stand."

"You mean to have the busts of the philosophers moved again?" asked King
Philometor, who, as he entered the tent, had heard the queen's last
words. "And Aristippus is to have the place of honor? I have no
objection--though he teaches that man must subjugate matter and not
become subject to it.--["Mihi res, non me rebus subjungere."]--This
indeed is easier to say than to do, and there is no man to whom it is
more impossible than to a king who has to keep on good terms with Greeks
and Egyptians, as we have, and with Rome as well. And besides all this to
avoid quarrelling with a jealous brother, who shares our kingdom! If men
could only know how much they would have to do as kings only in reading
and writing, they would take care never to struggle for a crown! Up to
this last half hour I have been examining and deciding applications and
petitions. Have you got through yours, Euergetes? Even more had
accumulated for you than for us."

"All were settled in an hour," replied the other promptly. "My eye is
quicker than the mouth of your reader, and my decisions commonly consist
of three words while you dictate long treatises to your scribes. So I had
done when you had scarcely begun, and yet I could tell you at once, if it
were not too tedious a matter, every single case that has come before me
for months, and explain it in all its details."

"That I could not indeed," said Philometor modestly, "but I know and
admire your swift intelligence and accurate memory."

"You see I am more fit for a king than you are;" laughed Euergetes. "You
are too gentle and debonair for a throne! Hand over your government to
me. I will fill your treasury every year with gold. I beg you now, come