“Is she stupid too?” asked Euergetes.  “That is also an attribute of the ever-smiling Cypria.”

“Enough so, I think, for our purpose,” laughed Cleopatra.  “But where are we to find such a Hebe as you have described, Lysias?  The daughter of Alimes the Arabarch is a charming child.”

“But she is brown, as brown as this excellent wine, and too thoroughly Egyptian,” said the high-steward, who superintended the young Macedonian cup-bearers; he bowed deeply as he spoke, and modestly drew the queen’s attention to his own daughter, a maiden of sixteen.  But Cleopatra objected, that she was much taller than herself, and that she would have to stand by the Hebe, and lay her hand on her arm.

Other maidens were rejected on various grounds, and Euergetes had already proposed to send off a carrier-pigeon to Alexandria to command that some fair Greek girl should be sent by an express quadriga to Memphis—­where the dark Egyptian gods and men flourish, and are more numerous than the fair race of Greeks—­when Lysias exclaimed: 

“I saw to-day the very girl we want, a Hebe that might have stepped out from the marble group at my father’s, and have been endued with life and warmth and color by some god.  Young, modest, rose and white, and just about as tall as Your Majesty.  If you will allow me, I will not tell you who she is, till after I have been to our tent to fetch the gems with the copies of the marble.”

“You will find them in an ivory casket at the bottom of my clothes-chest,” said Publius; “here is the key.”

“Make haste,” cried the queen, “for we are all curious to hear where in Memphis you discovered your modest, rose and white Hebe.”

CHAPTER X.

An hour had slipped by with the royal party, since Lysias had quitted the company; the wine-cups had been filled and emptied many times; Eulaeus had rejoined the feasters, and the conversation had taken quite another turn, since the whole of the company were not now equally interested in the same subject; on the contrary, the two kings were discussing with Aristarchus the manuscripts of former poets and of the works of the sages, scattered throughout Greece, and the ways and means of obtaining them or of acquiring exact transcripts of them for the library of the Museum.  Hierax was telling Eulaeus of the last Dionysiac festival, and of the representation of the newest comedy in Alexandria, and Eulaeus assumed the appearance—­not unsuccessfully—­of listening with both ears, interrupting him several times with intelligent questions, bearing directly on what he had said, while in fact his attention was exclusively directed to the queen, who had taken entire possession of the Roman Publius, telling him in a low tone of her life—­which was consuming her strength—­of her unsatisfied affections, and her enthusiasm for Rome and for manly vigor.  As she spoke her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled, for the more exclusively she kept the conversation in her own hands the better she thought she was being entertained; and Publius, who was nothing less than talkative, seldom interrupted her, only insinuating a flattering word now and then when it seemed appropriate; for he remembered the advice given him by the anchorite, and was desirous of winning the good graces of Cleopatra.