y that much-belauded and divine truth, which, according
to your favorite Plato, is allied to all earthly beauty; but it is
often just as useless as beauty itself, for the useful and the beautiful
exclude each other in a thousand cases, for ten when they coincide.
There, the gong is sounding for the third time. If you care for plain
proof that the Roman, only an hour before he visited you this morning,
had our little Hebe carried off from the temple, and conveyed to the
house of Apollodorus, the sculptor, at Memphis, you have only to come
to see me in my rooms early to-morrow after the first morning sacrifice.
You will at any rate wish to come and congratulate me; bring your
children with you, as I propose making them presents. You might even
question the Roman himself at the banquet to-day, but he will hardly
appear, for the sweetest gifts of Eros are bestowed at night, and as
the temple of Serapis is closed at sunset Publius has never yet seen his
Irene in the evening. May I expect you and the children after morning
sacrifice?"

Before Cleopatra had time to answer this question another trumpet-blast
was heard, and she exclaimed: "That is Philometor, come to fetch us to
the banquet. I will ere long give the Roman the opportunity of defending
himself, though--in spite of your accusations--I trust him entirely.
This morning I asked him solemnly whether it was true that he was in
love with his friend's charming Hebe, and he denied it in his firm and
manly way, and his replies were admirable and worthy of the noblest
mind, when I ventured to doubt his sincerity. He takes truth more
seriously than you do. He regards it not only as beautiful and right to
be truthful, he says, but as prudent too; for lies can only procure us
a small short-lived advantage, as transitory as the mists of night which
vanish as soon as the sun appears, while truth is like the sunlight
itself, which as often as it is dimmed by clouds reappears again and
again. And, he says, what makes a liar so particularly contemptible in
his eyes is, that to attain his end, he must be constantly declaring and
repeating the horror he has of those who are and do the very same thing
as he himself. The ruler of a state cannot always be truthful, and I
often have failed in truth; but my intercourse with Publius has aroused
much that is good in me, and which had been slumbering with closed eyes;
and if this man should prove to be the same as all the rest of you, then
I