But Pothinus came to Alexandria, and trouble came with him.  He threw every possible obstacle in Caesar’s way when the latter tried to collect a heavy loan due the Romans by the late king.  The etesian winds made it impossible to bring up reenforcements, and Caesar’s force was very small.  Pothinus grew more insolent each day.  For the first time, Drusus observed that his general was nervous, and suspicious lest he be assassinated.  Finally the Imperator determined to force a crisis.  To leave Egypt without humbling Pothinus meant a great lowering of prestige.  He sent off a private message to Palestine that Cleopatra should come to Alexandria.

Cleopatra came, not in royal procession, for she knew too well the finesse of the regent’s underlings; but entered the harbour in disguise in a small boat; and Apollodorus, her Sicilian confidant, carried her into Caesar’s presence wrapped in a bale of bedding which he had slung across his back.

The queen’s suit was won.  Cleopatra and the Imperator met, and the two strong personalities recognized each other’s affinity instantly.  Her coming was as a thunder-clap to Pothinus and his puppet Ptolemaeus.  They could only cringe and acquiesce when Caesar ordered them to be reconciled with the queen, and seal her restoration by a splendid court banquet.

The palace servants made ready for the feast.  The rich and noble of Alexandria were invited.  The stores of gold and silver vessels treasured in the vaults of the Lagidae were brought forth.  The arches and columns of the palace were festooned with flowers.  The best pipers and harpers of the great city were summoned to delight with their music.  Precious wine of Tanis was ready to flow like water.

Drusus saw the preparations with a glad heart.  Cornelia would be present in all her radiancy; and who there would be more radiant than she?

Chapter XXIV

Battling for Life

And then it was,—­with the chariots bearing the guests almost driving in at the gates of the palace,—­that Cerrinius, Caesar’s barber, came before his master with an alarming tale.  The worthy man declared that he had lighted on nothing less than a plot to murder the Romans, one and all, by admitting Achillas’s soldiery to the palace enclosure, while all the banqueters were helpless with drugged wine.  Pratinas, who had been supposed to be at Pelusium, Cerrinius had caught in retired conference with Pothinus, planning the arrangement of the feast.  Achillas’s mercenary army was advancing by stealthy marches to enter the city in the course of the evening.  The mob had been aroused by agitators, until it was in a mood to rise en masse against the Romans, and join in destroying them.  Such, in short, was the barber’s story.

There was no time to delay.  Caesar was a stranger in a strange and probably hostile land, and to fail to take warning were suicide.  He sent for Pothinus, and demanded the whereabouts of Achillas’s army.  The regent stammered that it was at Pelusium.  Caesar followed up the charge by inquiring about Pratinas.  Pothinus swore that he was at Pelusium also.  But Caesar cut his network of lies short, by commanding that a malefactor should be forced to swallow a beaker of the wine prepared for the banquet.  In a few moments the man was in a helpless stupor.