“You believe that happiness is like wealth, and that the happiest person is the one who receives the largest number of the gifts of fortune,” answered the Queen.  “The contrary, I think, can be easily proved.  The maxim that the more we have the less we need desire, is also false, though in this world there are only a certain number of desirable things.  He who already possesses one of ten solidi which are to be divided, ought really to desire only nine, and therefore would be poorer by a wish than another who has none.  True, it cannot be denied that the gods have burdened or endowed me with a greater number of perishable gifts than you and many others.  You seem to set a high value upon them.  Doubtless there may be one or another which you could appropriate only by the aid of the imagination.  May I ask which seems to you the most desirable?”

“Spare me the choice, I beseech you,” replied Barine in an embarrassed tone.  “I need nothing from your treasures, and, as for the other possessions I lack many things; but it is uncertain how the noblest and highest gifts in the possession of the marvellously endowed favourite of the gods would suit the small, commonplace ones I call mine, and I know not—­”

“A sensible doubt!” interrupted the Queen.  “The lame man, who desired a horse, obtained one, and on his first ride broke his neck.  The only blessing—­the highest of all—­which surely bestows happiness can neither be given away nor transferred from one to another.  He who has gained it may be robbed of it the next moment.”

The last sentence had fallen from the Queen’s lips slowly and thoughtfully, but Barine, remembering Archibius’s tale, said modestly, “You are thinking of the chief good mentioned by Epicurus—­perfect peace of mind.”

Cleopatra’s eyes sparkled with a brighter light as she asked eagerly, “Do you, the granddaughter of a philosopher, know the system of the master?”

“Very superficially, your Majesty.  My intellect is far inferior to yours.  It is difficult for me thoroughly to comprehend all the details of any system of philosophy.”

“Yet you have attempted it?”

“Others endeavoured to introduce me into the doctrines of the Stoics.  I have forgotten most of what I learned; only one thing lingered in my memory, and I know why—­because it pleased me.”

“And that?”

“Was the wise law of living according to the dictates of our own natures.  The command to shun everything contradictory to the simple fundamental traits of our own characters pleased me, and wherever I saw affectation, artificiality, and mannerism I was repelled, while from my grandfather’s teaching I drew the principle that I could do nothing better than to remain, so far as life would permit, what I had been as a child ere I had heard the first word of philosophy, or felt the constraint which society and its forms impose.”