“Ah, thou art impatient, Harmachis,” he answered; “it is ever the way of foolish youth.  Thou wouldst taste of the battle; thou dost tire of watching the breakers fall upon the beach, thou wouldst plunge into them and venture the desperate hazard of the war.  And so thou wouldst be going, Harmachis?  The bird would fly the nest as, when they are grown, the swallows fly from the eaves of the Temple.  Well, it shall be as thou desirest; the hour is at hand.  I have taught thee all that I have learned, and methinks that the pupil has outrun his master,” and he paused and wiped his bright black eyes, for he was very sad at the thought of my departure.

“And whither shall I go, my uncle?” I asked rejoicing; “back to Abouthis to be initiated into the mysteries of the Gods?”

“Ay, back to Abouthis, and from Abouthis to Alexandria, and from Alexandria to the Throne of thy fathers, Harmachis!  Listen, now; things are thus:  Thou knowest how Cleopatra, the Queen, fled into Syria when that false eunuch Pothinus set the will of her father Auletes at naught and raised her brother Ptolemy to the sole lordship of Egypt.  Thou knowest also how she came back, like a Queen indeed, with a great army in her train, and lay at Pelusium, and how at this juncture the mighty Caesar, that great man, that greatest of all men, sailed with a weak company hither to Alexandria from Pharsalia’s bloody field in hot pursuit of Pompey.  But he found Pompey already dead, having been basely murdered by Achillas, the General, and Lucius Septimius, the chief of the Roman legions in Egypt, and thou knowest how the Alexandrians were troubled at his coming and would have slain his lictors.  Then, as thou hast heard, Caesar seized Ptolemy, the young King, and his sister Arsinoe, and bade the army of Cleopatra and the army of Ptolemy, under Achillas, which lay facing each other at Pelusium, disband and go their ways.  And for answer Achillas marched on Caesar, and besieged him straitly in the Bruchium at Alexandria, and so, for a while, things were, and none knew who should reign in Egypt.  But then Cleopatra took up the dice, and threw them, and this was the throw she made—­in truth, it was a bold one.  For, leaving the army at Pelusium, she came at dusk to the harbour of Alexandria, and alone with the Sicilian Apollodorus entered and landed.  Then Apollodorus bound her in a bale of rich rugs, such as are made in Syria, and sent the rugs as a present to Caesar.  And when the rugs were unbound in the palace, behold! within them was the fairest girl on all the earth—­ay, and the most witty and the most learned.  And she seduced the great Caesar—­even his weight of years did not avail to protect him from her charms—­so that, as a fruit of his folly, he wellnigh lost his life, and all the glory he had gained in a hundred wars.”

“The fool!” I broke in—­“the fool!  Thou callest him great; but how can the man be truly great who has no strength to stand against a woman’s wiles?  Caesar, with the world hanging on his word!  Caesar, at whose breath forty legions marched and changed the fate of peoples!  Caesar the cold! the far-seeing! the hero!—­Caesar to fall like a ripe fruit into a false girl’s lap!  Why, in the issue, of what common clay was this Roman Caesar, and how poor a thing!”