This, however, far from improving the point of view from which she regarded him, made him appear not only hateful, but contemptible too.  All the officers of government, also, in the Alexandrian court had turned against her, because they had supposed that they could control her brother more easily if she were away.  Thus she had always been surrounded by selfish, mercenary, and implacable foes.  Now, for the first time, she seemed to have a friend.  A protector had suddenly arisen to support and defend her,—­a man of very alluring person and manners, of a very noble and generous spirit, and of the very highest station.  He loved her, and she could not refrain from loving him in return.  She committed her cause entirely into his hands, confided to him all her interests, and gave herself up wholly into his power.

Nor was the unbounded confidence which she reposed in him undeserved, so far as related to his efforts to restore her to her throne.  The legions which Caesar had sent for into Syria had not yet arrived, and his situation in Alexandria was still very defenseless and very precarious.  He did not, however, on this account, abate in the least degree the loftiness and self confidence of the position which he had assumed, but he commenced immediately the work of securing Cleopatra’s restoration.  This quiet assumption of the right and power to arbitrate and decide such a question as that of the claim to the throne, in a country where he had accidentally landed and found rival claimants disputing for the succession, while he was still wholly destitute of the means of enforcing the superiority which he so coolly assumed, marks the immense ascendency which the Roman power had attained at this time in the estimation of mankind, and is, besides, specially characteristic of the genius and disposition of Caesar.

Very soon after Cleopatra had come to him, Caesar sent for the young Ptolemy, and urged upon him the duty and expediency of restoring Cleopatra.  Ptolemy was beginning now to attain an age at which he might be supposed to have some opinion of his own on such a question.  He declared himself utterly opposed to any such design.  In the course of the conversation he learned that Cleopatra had arrived at Alexandria, and that she was then concealed in Caesar’s palace.  This intelligence awakened in his mind the greatest excitement and indignation.  He went away from Caesar’s presence in a rage.  He tore the diadem which he was accustomed to wear in the streets, from his head, threw it down, and trampled it under his feet.  He declared to the people that he was betrayed, and displayed the most violent indications of vexation and chagrin.  The chief subject of his complaint, in the attempts which he made to awaken the popular indignation against Caesar and the Romans, was the disgraceful impropriety of the position which his sister had assumed in surrendering herself as she had done to Caesar.  It is most probable, however, unless his character was very different from that of every other Ptolemy in the line, that what really awakened his jealousy and anger was fear of the commanding influence and power to which Cleopatra was likely to attain through the agency of so distinguished a protector, rather than any other consequences of his friendship, or any real considerations of delicacy in respect to his sister’s good name or his own martial honor.