“Now, given a philosophical Jew who knows his Empedocles—­and I grant there are many such in Alexandria, extremely keen and cultivated men—­ what idea can he form in his own mind of ‘creation out of nothing?’ Must he not pause to think very seriously when he remembers the fundamental axiom that ‘out of nothing, nothing can come,’ and that nothing which has once existed can ever be completely annihilated?  At any rate the necessary deduction must be that the life of man ends in that nothingness whence everything in existence has proceeded.  To live and to die according to this book is not highly profitable.  I can easily reconcile myself to the idea of annihilation, as a man who knows how to value a dreamless sleep after a day brimful of enjoyment—­as a man who if he must cease to be Euergetes would rather spring into the open jaws of nothingness—­but as a philosopher, no, never!”

“You, it is true,” replied the queen, “cannot help measuring all and everything by the intellectual standard exclusively; for the gods, who endowed you with gifts beyond a thousand others, struck with blindness or deafness that organ which conveys to our minds any religious or moral sentiment.  If that could see or hear, you could no more exclude the conviction that these writings are full of the deepest purport than I can, nor doubt that they have a powerful hold on the mind of the reader.

“They fetter their adherents to a fixed law, but they take all bitterness out of sorrow by teaching that a stern father sends us suffering which is represented as being sometimes a means of education, and sometimes a punishment for transgressing a hard and clearly defined law.  Their god, in his infallible but stern wisdom, sets those who cling to him on an evil and stony path to prove their strength, and to let them at last reach the glorious goal which is revealed to them from the beginning.”

“How strange such words as these sound in the mouth of a Greek,” interrupted Euergetes.  “You certainly must be repeating them after the son of the Jewish high-priest, who defends the cause of his cruel god with so much warmth and skill.”

“I should have thought,” retorted Cleopatra, “that this overwhelming figure of a god would have pleased you, of all men; for I know of no weakness in you.  Quite lately Dositheos, the Jewish centurion—­a very learned man—­tried to describe to my husband the one great god to whom his nation adheres with such obstinate fidelity, but I could not help thinking of our beautiful and happy gods as a gay company of amorous lords and pleasure-loving ladies, and comparing them with this stern and powerful being who, if only he chose to do it, might swallow them all up, as Chronos swallowed his own children.”

“That,” exclaimed Euergetes, “is exactly what most provokes me in this superstition.  It crushes our light-hearted pleasure in life, and whenever I have been reading the book of the Hebrews everything has come into my mind that I least like to think of.  It is like an importunate creditor that reminds us of our forgotten debts, and I love pleasure and hate an importunate reminder.  And you, pretty one, life blooms for you—­”