“Our family life was of course wholly transformed by the reception of the royal children.  In the first place, we moved from our house in the Museum Square into the little palace at Kanopus, and the big, shady garden delighted us.  I remember, as though it were but yesterday, the morning—­I was then a boy of fifteen—­when my father told us that two of the King’s daughters would soon become members of the household.  There were three of us children—­Charmian, who went to the war with the Queen, because Iras, our niece, was ill; I myself; and Straton, who died long ago.  We were urged to treat the princesses with the utmost courtesy and consideration, and we perceived that their reception really demanded respect; for the palace, which we had found empty and desolate, was refurnished from roof to foundation.

“The day before they were expected horses, chariots, and litters came, while boats and a splendid state galley, fully manned, arrived by sea.  Then a train of male and female slaves appeared, among them two fat eunuchs.

“I can still see the angry look with which my father surveyed all these people.  He drove at once to the city, and on his return his clear eyes were as untroubled as ever.  A court official accompanied him, and only that portion of the useless amount of luggage and number of persons that my father desired remained.

“The princesses were to come the next morning—­it was at the end of February—­flowers were blooming in the grass and on the bushes, while the foliage of the trees glittered with the fresh green which the rising sap gives to the young leaves.  I was sitting on a strong bough of a sycamore-tree, which grew opposite to the house, watching for them.  Their arrival was delayed and, as I gazed meanwhile over the garden, I thought it must surely please them, for not a palace in the city had one so beautiful.

“At last the litters appeared; they had neither runners nor attendants, as my father had requested, and when the princesses alighted—­both at the same moment—­I knew not which way to turn my eyes first, for the creature that fluttered like a dragon-fly rather than stepped from the first litter, was not a girl like other mortals—­she seemed like a wish, a hope.  When the dainty, beautiful creature turned her head hither and thither, and at last gazed questioningly, as if beseeching help, into the faces of my father and mother, who stood at the gate to receive her, it seemed to me that such must have been the aspect of Psyche when she stood pleading for mercy at the throne of Zeus.

“But it was worth while to look at the other also.  Was that Cleopatra?  She might have been the elder, for she was as tall as her sister, but how utterly unlike!  From the waving hair to every movement of the hands and body the former—­it was Cleopatra—­had seemed to me as if she were flying.  Everything about the second figure, on the contrary, was solid, nay, even seemed to offer positive resistance.  She sprang from the litter