Anubis had intended to remind Cleopatra of his refusal, and show her the great danger incurred by mortals who strove to use powers beyond their sphere.  It had been his purpose to bid her remember Phaeton, who had almost kindled a conflagration in the world, when he attempted, in the chariot of his father, Phoebus Apollo, to guide the horses of the sun.  But this was unnecessary, for he had scarcely assented to the question ere, with passionate vehemence, she ordered him to destroy before her eyes the cup which had brought so much misfortune.

The priest feigned that her desire harmonized with a resolution which he had himself formed.  In fact, before her arrival, he had feared that the goblet might be used in some fatal manner if Octavianus should take possession of the city and country, and the wonder-working vessel should fall into his hands.  Nektanebus had made the cup for Egypt.  To wrest it from the foreign ruler was acting in the spirit of the last king in whose veins had flowed the blood of the Pharaohs, and who had toiled with enthusiastic devotion for the independence and liberty of his people.  To destroy this man’s marvellous work rather than deliver it to the Roman conqueror seemed to the chief priest, after the Queen’s command, a sacred duty, and as such he represented it to be when he commanded the smelting furnace to be fired and the cup transformed into a shapeless mass before the eyes of Cleopatra.

While the metal was melting he eagerly told the Queen how easily she could dispense with the vessel which owed its magic power to the mighty Isis.

The spell of woman’s charms was also a gift of the goddess.  It would suffice to render Antony’s heart soft and yielding as the fire melted the gold.  Perhaps the Imperator had forfeited, with the Queen’s respect, her love—­the most priceless of blessings.  He, Anubis, would regard this as a great boon of the Deity; “for,” he concluded, “Mark Antony is the cliff which will shatter every effort to secure to my royal mistress undiminished the heritage which has come to her and her children from their ancestors, and preserve the independence and prosperity of this beloved land.  This cup was a costly treasure.  The throne and prosperity of Egypt are worthy of greater sacrifices.  But I know that there is none harder for a woman to make than her love.”

The meaning of the old man’s words Cleopatra learned the following morning, when she granted the first interview to Timagenes, Octavianus’s envoy.

The keen-witted, brilliant man, who had been one of her best teachers and with whom, when a pupil, she had had many an argument, was kindly received, and fulfilled his commission with consummate skill.

The Queen listened attentively to his representations, showed him that her own intellect had not lost in flexibility, though it had gained power; and when she dismissed him, with rich gifts and gracious words, she knew that she could preserve the independence of her beloved native land and retain the throne for herself and her children if she would surrender Antony to the conqueror or to him, as “the person acting,” or—­these were Timagenes’s own words—­“remove him forever from the play whose end she had the power to render either brilliant or fateful.”