As a matter of fact, her own position at Alexandria had begun to grow complicated.  First of all, Agias had made one day a discovery in the city which it was exceeding well for Artemisia was not postponed for a later occasion.  Pratinas was in Alexandria.  The young Greek had not been recognized when, as chance meetings will occur, he came across his one-time antagonist face to face on the street.  He had no fears for himself.  But Artemisia was no longer safe in the city.  Cleomenes arranged that the girl should be sent to a villa, owned by the relatives of his late wife, some distance up the Nile.  Artemisia would thus be parted from Agias, but she would be quite safe; and to secure that, any sacrifice of stolen looks and pretty coquetry was cheerfully accepted.

Soon after this unpleasant little discovery, a far more serious event occurred.  Pothinus the eunuch, Achillas, the Egyptian commander of the army, and Theodotus, a “rhetoric teacher,” whose real business was to spin, not words, but court intrigues, had plotted together to place the young King Ptolemaeus in sole power.  The conspiracy ran its course.  There was a rising of the “Macedonian"[180] guard at the palace, a gathering of citizens in the squares of the capital, culminating in bloody riots and proclamations declaring the king vested with the only supreme power.  Hot on the heels of this announcement it was bruited around the city that Cleopatra had escaped safely to Palestine, where, in due time, she would doubtless be collecting an army at the courts of Hyrcanus, the Jewish prince, and other Syrian potentates, to return and retake the crown.

  [180] Macedonian it is needless to say was a mere name.  The
  Graeco-Egyptian soldiery and citizen body of Alexandria probably
  had hardly a drop of Macedonian blood in their veins.

Alexandria was accustomed to such dynastic disruptions.  The rioting over, the people were ready to go back to the paper and linen factories, and willing to call Ptolemaeus the “Son of Ra,” or “King,” until his sister should defeat him in battle.  Cornelia grieved that Cleopatra should thus be forced into exile.  She had grown more and more intimate with the queen.  The first glamour of Cleopatra’s presence had worn away.  Cornelia saw her as a woman very beautiful, very wilful, gifted with every talent, yet utterly lacking that moral stability which would have been the crown of a perfect human organism.  The two women had grown more and more in friendship and intimacy; and when Cornelia studied in detail the dark, and often hideous, coils and twistings of the history of the Hellenistic royal families, the more vividly she realized that Cleopatra was the heiress of generations of legalized license,[181] of cultured sensuality, of veneered cruelty, and sheer blood-thirstiness.  Therefore Cornelia had pitied, not blamed, the queen, and, now that misfortune had fallen upon her, was distressed for the plight of Cleopatra.