subtle thinking and deep drinking!"

"To deep thinking and subtle drinking!" retorted the person thus
addressed, while he raised the cup, looked into the wine with his
twinkling eyes and lifted it slowly to his nose--a long, well-formed and
slightly aquiline nose--and to his thin lips.

"Oh! Aristarchus," exclaimed Euergetes, and he frowned. "You please me
better when you clear up the meaning of your poets and historians than
when you criticise the drinking-maxims of a king. Subtle drinking is mere
sipping, and sipping I leave to the bitterns and other birds that live
content among the reeds. Do you understand me? Among reeds, I
say--whether cut for writing, or no."

"By subtle drinking," replied the great critic with perfect indifference,
as he pushed the thin, gray hair from his high brow with his slender
hand. "By subtle drinking I mean the drinking of choice wine, and did you
ever taste anything more delicate than this juice of the vines of
Anthylla that your illustrious brother has set before us? Your
paradoxical axiom commends you at once as a powerful thinker and as the
benevolent giver of the best of drinks."

"Happily turned," exclaimed Cleopatra, clapping her hands, "you here see,
Publius, a proof of the promptness of an Alexandrian tongue."

"Yes!" said Euergetes, "if men could go forth to battle with words
instead of spears the masters of the Museum in Alexander's city, with
Aristarchus at their head, they might rout the united armies of Rome and
Carthage in a couple of hours."

"But we are not now in the battle-field but at a peaceful meal," said the
king, with suave amiability. "You did in fact overhear our secret
Euergetes, and mocked at my faithful Egyptians, in whose place I would
gladly set fair Greeks if only Alexandria still belonged to me instead of
to you.--However, a splendid procession shall not be wanting at your
birthday festival."

"And do you really still take pleasure in these eternal goose-step
performances?" asked Euergetes, stretching himself out on his couch, and
folding his hands to support the back of his head. "Sooner could I
accustom myself to the delicate drinking of Aristarchus than sit for
hours watching these empty pageants. On two conditions only can I declare
myself ready and willing to remain quiet, and patiently to dawdle through
almost half a day, like an ape in a cage: First, if it will give our
Roman friend Publius Cornelius Scipio any pleasure to witness such a