“And what was the Roman’s answer?” Eulaeus must have handed the tile to the king, for he laughed loudly again, and cried out: 

“So he will walk into the trap—­will arrive by half an hour after midnight at the latest, and greets Klea from her sister Irene.  He carries on love-making and abduction wholesale, and buys water-bearers by the pair, like doves in the market or sandals in a shoe maker’s stall.  Only see how the simpleton writes Greek; in these few words there are two mistakes, two regular schoolboys’ blunders.

“The fellow must have had a very pleasant day of it, since he must have been reckoning on a not unsuccessful evening—­but the gods have an ugly habit of clenching the hand with which they have long caressed their favorites, and striking him with their fist.

“Amalthea’s horn has been poured out on him today; first he snapped up, under my very nose, my little Hebe, the Irene of Irenes, whom I hope to-morrow to inherit from him; then he got the gift of my best Cyrenaan horses, and at the same time the flattering assurance of my valuable friendship; then he had audience of my fair sister—­and it goes more to the heart of a republican than you would believe when crowned heads are graciously disposed towards him—­finally the sister of his pretty sweetheart invites him to an assignation, and she, if you and Zoe speak the truth, is a beauty in the grand style.  Now these are really too many good things for one inhabitant of this most stingily provided world; and in one single day too, which, once begun, is so soon ended; and justice requires that we should lend a helping hand to destiny, and cut off the head of this poppy that aspires to rise above its brethren; the thousands who have less good fortune than he would otherwise have great cause to complain of neglect.”

“I am happy to see you in such good humor,” said Eulaeus.

“My humor is as may be,” interrupted the king.  “I believe I am only whistling a merry tune to keep up my spirits in the dark.  If I were on more familiar terms with what other men call fear I should have ample reason to be afraid; for in the quail-fight we have gone in for I have wagered a crown-aye, and more than that even.  To-morrow only will decide whether the game is lost or won, but I know already to-day that I would rather see my enterprise against Philometor fail, with all my hopes of the double crown, than our plot against the life of the Roman; for I was a man before I was a king, and a man I should remain, if my throne, which now indeed stands on only two legs, were to crash under my weight.

“My sovereign dignity is but a robe, though the costliest, to be sure, of all garments.  If forgiveness were any part of my nature I might easily forgive the man who should soil or injure that—­but he who comes too near to Euergetes the man, who dares to touch this body, and the spirit it contains, or to cross it in its desires and purposes—­him I will crush unhesitatingly to the earth, I will see him torn in pieces.  Sentence is passed on the Roman, and if your ruffians do their duty, and if the gods accept the holocaust that I had slain before them at sunset for the success of my project, in a couple of hours Publius Cornelius Scipio will have bled to death.