out, and when we speak hesitate to step beyond
the outlines of those figures of rhetoric which we learned at school!
You have burst these bonds, but even your mighty spirit still shows
traces of them. Publius Scipio, on the contrary, thinks and sees and
speaks with perfect independence, and his upright sense guides him to
the truth without any trouble or special training. His society revives
me like the fresh air that I breathe when I come out into the open air
from the temple filled with the smoke of incense--like the milk and
bread which a peasant offered us during our late excursion to the coast,
after we had been living for a year on nothing but dainties."

"He has all the admirable characteristics of a child!" interrupted
Euergetes. "And if that is all that appears estimable to you in the
Roman your son may soon replace the great Cornelius."

"Not soon! no, not till he shall have grown older than you are, and a
man, a thorough man, from the crown of his head to the sole of his
foot, for such a man is Publius! I believe--nay, I am sure--that he is
incapable of any mean action, that he could not be false in word or even
in look, nor feign a sentiment be did not feel."

"Why so vehement, sister? So much zeal is quite unnecessary on this
occasion! You know well enough that I have my easy days, and that this
excitement is not good for you; nor has the Roman deserved that you
should be quite beside yourself for his sake. The fellow dared in my
presence to look at you as Paris might at Helen before he carried her
off, and to drink out of your cup; and this morning he no doubt did
not contradict what he conveyed to you last night with his eyes--nay,
perhaps by his words. And yet, scarcely an hour before, he had been to
the Necropolis to bear his sweetheart away from the temple of the gloomy
Serapis into that of the smiling Eros."

"You shall prove this!" cried the queen in great excitement. "Publius is
my friend--"

"And I am yours!"

"You have often proved the reverse, and now again with lies and
cheating--"

"You seem," interrupted Euergetes, "to have learned from your
unphilosophical favorite to express your indignation with extraordinary
frankness; to-day however I am, as I have said, as gentle as a kitten--"

"Euergetes and gentleness!" cried Cleopatra with a forced laugh. "No,
you only step softly like a cat when she is watching a bird, and your
gentleness covers some ruthless scheme, which we shall find out