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
to Alexandria with Cleopatra for good, and share with me the palace and
the gardens in the Bruchion. I will nominate your little Philopator heir
to the throne, for I have no wish to contract a permanent tie with
any woman, as Cleopatra belongs to you. This is a bold proposal, but
reflect, Philometor, if you were to accept it, how much time it would
give you for your music, your disputations with the Jews, and all your
other favorite occupations.”
“You never know how far you may go with your jest!” interrupted
Cleopatra. “Besides, you devote quite as much time to your studies
in philology and natural history as he does to music and improving
conversations with his learned friends.”
“Just so,” assented Philometor, “and you may be counted among the sages
of the Museum with far more reason than I.”
“But the difference between us,” replied Euergetes, “is that I despise
all the philosophical prattlers and rubbish-collectors in Alexandria
almost to the point of hating them, while for science I have as great a
passion as for a lover. You, on the contrary, make much of the learned
men, but trouble yourself precious little about science.”
“Drop the subject, pray,” begged Cleopatra. “I believe that you two have
never yet been together for half an hour without Euergetes having begun
some dispute, and Philometor having at last given in, to pacify him.
Our guests must have been waiting for us a long time. Had Publius Scipio
made his appearance?”
“He had sent to excuse himself,” replied the king as he scratched the
poll of Cleopatra’s parrot, parting its feathers with the tips of his
fingers. “Lysias, the Corinthian, is sitting below, and he says he does
not know where his friend can be gone.”
“But we know very well,” said Euergetes, casting an ironical glance
at the queen. “It is pleasant to be with Philometor and Cleopatra, but
better still with Eros and Hebe. Sister, you look pale--shall I call for
Zoe?”
Cleopatra shook her head in negation, but she dropped into a seat,
and sat stooping, with her head bowed over her knees as if she were
dreadfully tired. Euergetes turned his back on her, and spoke to his
brother of indifferent subjects, while she drew lines, some straight and
some crooked, with her fan-stick through the pile of the soft rug on the
floor, and sat gazing thoughtfully at her feet. As she sat thus her
eye was caught by her sandals, richly set with precious stones, and the
slender toes she had so often contemplated with pleasure; but now the
sight of them seemed to vex her, for in obedience to a swift impulse
she loosened the straps, pushed off her right sandal with her left foot,
kicked it from her, and said, turning to her husband:
“It is late and I do not feel well, and you may sup without me.”
“By the healing Isis!” exclaimed Philometor, going up to her. “You look
suffering. Shall I send for the physicians? Is it really nothing more
than your usual headache? The gods be thanked! But that you should be
unwell just to-day! I had so much to say to you; and the chief thing
of all was that we are still a long way from completeness in our
preparations for our performance. If this luckless Hebe were not--”
“She is in good hands,” interrupted Euergetes. “The Roman, Publius
Scipio, has taken her to a place of safety; perhaps in order to present
her to me to morrow morning in return for the horses from Cyrene which
I sent him to-day. How brightly your eyes sparkle, sister--with joy no
doubt at this good idea. This evening, I dare say he is rehearsing the
little one in her part that she may perform it well to-morrow. If we are
mistaken--if Publius is ungrateful and proposes keeping the dove, then
Thais, your pretty Athenian waiting-woman, may play the part of Hebe.
What do you think of that suggestion, Cleopatra?”
“That I forbid such jesting with me!” cried the queen vehemently.
“No one has any consideration for me--no one pities me, and I suffer
fearfully! Euergetes scorns me--you, Philometor, would be glad to drag
me down! If only the banquet is not interfered with, and so long as
nothing spoils your pleasure!--Whether I die or no, no one cares!”
With these words the queen burst into tears, and roughly pushed away her
husband as he endeavored to soothe her. At last she dried her eyes, and
said: “Go down-the guests are waiting.”
“Immediately, my love,” replied Philometor. “But one thing I must tell
you, for I know that it will arouse your sympathy. The Roman read to you
the petition for pardon for Philotas, the chief of the Chrematistes
and ‘relative of the king,’ which contains such serious charges against
Eulaeus. I was ready with all my heart to grant your wish and to pardon
the man who is the father of these miserable water-bearers; but,
before having the decree drawn up, I had the lists of the exiles to the
gold-mines carefully looked through, and there it was discovered that
Philotas and his wife have both been dead more than half a year. Death
has settled this question, and I cannot grant to Publius the first
service he has asked of me--asked with great urgency too. I am sorry for
this, both for his sake and for that of poor Philotas, who was held in
high esteem by our mother.”
“May the ravens devour them!” answered Cleopatra, pressing her forehead
against the ivory frame which surrounded the stuffed back of her seat.
“Once more I beg of you excuse me from all further speech.” This time
the two kings obeyed her wishes. When Euergetes offered her his hand she
said with downcast eyes, and poking her fan-stick into the wool of the
carpet:
“I will visit you early to-morrow.”
“After the first sacrifice,” added Euergetes. “If I know you well,
something that you will then hear will please you greatly; very greatly
indeed, I should think. Bring the children with you; that I ask of you
as a birthday request.”