The young officer at once hastened to the palace and reported for service.  Caesar questioned him as to the situation at Pelusium, and Drusus described the unpromising attitude of Pothinus, and also mentioned how he had found Cornelia and his aunt.

The general, engrossed as he was with his business of state and threatening war, put all his duties aside and at once went to the house of Cleomenes.  It was the first time Cornelia had ever met the man whose career had exerted such an influence upon her own life.  She had at first known of him only through the filthy, slanderous verses of such oligarchs as Catullus and Calvus; then through her lover she had come to look upon Caesar as an incarnation as it were of omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence—­the man for whom everything was worth sacrificing, from whom every noble thing was to be expected.

She met the conquerer of Ariovistus, Vercingetorix, and Pompeius like the frank-hearted, patrician maiden that she was, without shyness, without servility.

“My father died in your army,” she said on meeting; “my affianced husband has taught me to admire you, as he himself does.  Let us be friends!”

And Caesar bowed as became the polished gentleman, who had been the centre of the most brilliant salons of Rome, and took the hand she offered, and replied:—­

“Ah!  Lady Cornelia, we have been friends long, though never we met before!  But I am doubly the friend of whosoever is the friend of Quintus Livius Drusus.”

Whereupon Cornelia was more completely the vassal of the Imperator than ever, and words flew fast between them.  In short, just as in the case with Cleopatra, she opened her heart before she knew that she had said anything, and told of all her life, with its shadows and brightness; and Caesar listened and sympathized as might a father; and Drusus perfectly realized, if Cornelia could not—­how many-sided was the man who could thus turn from weighing the fate of empires to entering unfeignedly into a sharing of the hopes and fears of a very young, and still quite unsophisticated, woman.

When the Imperator departed Drusus accompanied him to the palace.  Neither of the two, general nor subaltern, spoke for a long while; at last Caesar remarked:—­

“Do you know what is uppermost in my mind, after meeting women like Fabia or Cornelia?”

Drusus shook his head.

“I believe that there are gods, who bring such creatures into the world.  They are not chance accretions of atoms.”  And then Caesar added, half dreamily:  “You ought to be a very happy man.  I was once—­it was many years ago.  Her name was Cornelia also.”

* * * * *

Serious and more serious, grew the situation at Alexandria.  King Ptolemaeus and Pothinus came to the city from Pelusium.  Caesar had announced that he intended to examine the title of the young monarch to the undivided crown, and make him show cause why he had expelled Cleopatra.  This the will of Ptolemaeus Auletes had enjoined the Roman government to do; for in it he had commissioned his allies to see that his oldest children shared the inheritance equally.