he laughed,
and, in the words of the proverb which they have at Alexandria, told her
that "Mountains live longer than Kings." Thereon she smiled at his ready
answer, and let him go. Also my uncle Sepa told me that on the morrow I
should see this Cleopatra. For it was her birthday (as, indeed, it was
also mine), and, dressed in the robes of the Holy Isis, she would pass
in state from her palace on the Lochias to the Serapeum to offer a
sacrifice at the Shrine of the false God who sits in the Temple. And he
said that thereafter the fashion by which I should gain entrance to the
household of the Queen should be contrived.

Then, being very weary, I went to rest, but could sleep little for the
strangeness of the place, the noises in the streets, and the thought of
the morrow. While it was yet dark, I rose, climbed the stair to the
roof of the house, and waited. Presently, the sun's rays shot out like
arrows, and lit upon the white wonder of the marble Pharos, whose light
instantly sank and died, as though, indeed, the sun had killed it. Now
the rays fell upon the palaces of the Lochias where Cleopatra lay, and
lit them up till they flamed like a jewel set on the dark, cool bosom
of the sea. Away the light flew, kissing the Soma's sacred dome, beneath
which Alexander sleeps, touching the high tops of a thousand palaces
and temples; past the porticoes of the great museum that loomed near at
hand, striking the lofty Shrine, where, carved of ivory, is the image
of the false God Serapis, and at last seeming to lose itself in the vast
and gloomy Necropolis. Then, as the dawn gathered into day, the flood of
brightness, overbrimming the bowl of night, flowed into the lower lands
and streets, and showed Alexandria red in the sunrise as the mantle of
a king, and shaped as a mantle. The Etesian wind came up from the north,
and swept away the vapour from the harbours, so that I saw their blue
waters rocking a thousand ships. I saw, too, that mighty mole the
Heptastadium; I saw the hundreds of streets, the countless houses, the
innumerable wealth and splendour of Alexandria set like a queen between
lake Mareotis and the ocean, and dominating both, and I was filled with
wonder. This, then, was one city in my heritage of lands and cities!
Well, it was worth the grasping. And having looked my full and fed my
heart, as it were, with the sight of splendour, I communed with the Holy
Isis and came down from the roof.

In the chamber beneath