“It has been said that it is no less difficult to keep a fortune than to deserve it; and so perhaps we, who are merely ‘keepers’ may nevertheless make some credit—­all the more because we have been able to arrange the wealth we found under hand, to work it profitably, to apply it well, to elucidate it, and to make it available.  When anything new is created by one of our circle we always link it on to the old; and in many departments we have indeed even succeeded in soaring above the ancients, particularly in that of the experimental sciences.  The sublime intelligence of our forefathers commanded a broad horizon—­our narrower vision sees more clearly the objects that lie close to us.  We have discovered the sure path for all intellectual labor, the true scientific method; and an observant study of things as they are, succeeds better with us than it did with our predecessors.  Hence it follows that in the provinces of the natural sciences, in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics and geography the sages of our college have produced works of unsurpassed merit.  Indeed the industry of my associates—­”

“Is very great,” cried Euergetes.  “But they stir up such a dust that all free-thought is choked, and because they value quantity above all things in the results they obtain, they neglect to sift what is great from what is small; and so Publius Scipio and others like him, who shrug their shoulders over the labors of the learned, find cause enough to laugh in their faces.  Out of every four of you I should dearly like to set three to some handicraft, and I shall do it too, one of these days—­I shall do it, and turn them and all their miserable paraphernalia out of the Museum, and out of my capital.  They may take refuge with you, Philometor, you who marvel at everything you cannot do yourself, who are always delighted to possess what I reject, and to make much of those whom I condemn—­and Cleopatra I dare say will play the harp, in honor of their entering Memphis.”

“I dare say!” answered the queen, laughing bitterly.  “Still, it is to be expected that your wrath may fall even on worthy men.  Until then I will practise my music, and study the treatise on harmony that you have begun writing.  You are giving us proof to-day of how far you have succeeded in attaining unison in your own soul.”

“I like you in this mood!” cried Euergetes.  “I love you, sister, when you are like this!  It ill becomes the eagle’s brood to coo like the dove, and you have sharp talons though you hide them never so well under your soft feathers.  It is true that I am writing a treatise on harmony, and I am doing it with delight; still it is one of those phenomena which, though accessible to our perception, are imperishable, for no god even could discover it entire and unmixed in the world of realities.  Where is harmony to be found in the struggles and rapacious strife of the life of the Cosmos?  And our human existence is but the diminished reflection of that process of birth and decease, of evolution and annihilation, which is going on in all that is perceptible to our senses; now gradually and invisibly, now violently and convulsively, but never harmonyously.