“Arsinoe had received more than she could venture to expect; but she was again most deeply angered.  After Caesar’s entry into the palace, she had received him as Queen, and hoped everything from his favour.  Then her hated sister had come and, as so often happened, she was forgotten for Cleopatra’s sake.

“This was too much, and with the eunuch Ganymedes, her confidant, and—­as I have already said—­an able warrior, she left the palace and joined the dictator’s foes.

“There were severe battles on land and sea; in the streets of the city, for the drinkable water excavated by the foe; and against the conflagration which destroyed part of the Bruchium and the library of the museum.  Yet, half dead with thirst, barely escaped from drowning, threatened on all sides by fierce hatred, he stood firm, and remained victor also in the open field, after the young King had placed himself at the head of the Egyptians and collected an army.

“You know that the boy was drowned in the flight.

“In battle and mortal peril, amid blood and the clank of arms, Caesar and Cleopatra spent half a year ere they were permitted to pluck the fruit of their common labour.  The dictator now made her Queen of Egypt, and gave her, as co-regent, her youngest brother, a boy not half her own age.  To Arsinoe he granted the life she had forfeited, but sent her to Italy.

“Peace followed the victory.  Now, it is true, grave duties must have summoned the statesman back to Rome, but he tarried three full months longer.

“Whoever knows the life of the ambitious Julius, and is aware what this delay might have cost him, may well strike his brow with his hand, and ask, ’Is it true and possible that he used this precious time to take a trip with the woman he loved up the Nile, to the island of Isis, which is so dear to the Queen, to the extreme southern frontier of the country?’ Yet it was so, and I myself went in the second ship, and not only saw them together, but more than once shared their banquets and their conversation.  It was giving and taking, forcing down and elevating, a succession of discords, not unpleasant to hear, because experience taught that they would finally terminate in the most beautiful harmony.  It was a festal day for all the senses.”

“I imagine the whole Nile journey,” interrupted Barine, “to be like the fairy voyage, when the purple silk sails of Cleopatra’s galley bore Antony along the Cydnus.”

“No, no,” replied Archibius, “she first learned from Antony the art of filling this earthly existence with fleeting pleasures.  Caesar demanded more.  Her intellect offered him the highest enjoyment.”

Here he hesitated.

“True, the skill with which, to please Antony, she daily offered him for years fresh charms for every sense, was not a matter of accident.”

“And this,” cried Barine, “this was undertaken by the woman who had recognized the chief good in peace of mind!”