garden.  But we had learned how the philosopher loved his family estate.  The Queen is unwilling to use violence towards the old man.  She is just, and perhaps other reasons, of which I am ignorant, influence her.  So I promised to look for another site, though I saw how much she desired to have her tomb connected with the sanctuary of her favourite goddess Then—­I have already told the clever brown witch—­then the immortals, Divinity, Fate, or whatever we call the power which guides the world and our lives according to eternal laws and its own mysterious, omnipotent will, permitted a rascally deed, from which I think may come deliverance for you and a source of pleasure to the Queen in these days of trial.”

“Man, man!  Where will this new passion lead you?  The horses are stamping impatiently outside; duty summons the most faithful of men, and he stands like a prophet, indulging in mysterious sayings!”

“Whose meaning and purport, spite of your calm calculations of existing circumstances, will soon seem no less wonderful to you than to me, whose unruly artist nature, according to your opinion, is playing me a trick,” retorted the architect.  “Now listen to this explanation:  Didymus’s house will be occupied at once by my workmen, but I shall examine the lower rooms of the Temple of Isis.  I have with me a document requiring obedience to my orders.  Cleopatra herself laid the plans before me, even the secret portion showing the course of the subterranean chambers.  It will cast some light upon my mysterious sayings if I bear you away from the enemy through one of the secret corridors.  They were right in concealing from you by how slender a thread, spite of the power of your example in mathematics, the sword hangs above your head.  Now that I see a possibility of removing it, I can show it to you.  Tomorrow you would have fallen, without hope of rescue, into the hands of cruel foes and been shamefully abandoned by your own weak uncle, had not the most implacable of all your enemies permitted himself the infamous pleasure of laying hands on an old man’s house, and the Queen, in consequence of an agitating message, had the idea suggested of building her own mausoleum.  The corridor”—­here he lowered his voice—­“of which I spoke leads to the sea at a spot close beside Didymus’s garden, and through it I will guide you, and, if possible, Barine also, to the shore.  This could be accomplished in the usual way only by the greatest risk.  If we use the passage we can reach a dark place on the strand unseen, and unless some special misfortune pursues us our flight will be unnoticed.  The litters and your tottering gait would betray everything if we were to enter the boat anywhere else in the great harbour.”