as to
spin, not words, but court intrigues, had plotted together to place
the young King Ptolemaeus in sole power. The conspiracy ran its course.
There was a rising of the "Macedonian"[180] guard at the palace, a
gathering of citizens in the squares of the capital, culminating in
bloody riots and proclamations declaring the king vested with the only
supreme power. Hot on the heels of this announcement it was bruited
around the city that Cleopatra had escaped safely to Palestine, where,
in due time, she would doubtless be collecting an army at the courts
of Hyrcanus, the Jewish prince, and other Syrian potentates, to return
and retake the crown.

[180] Macedonian it is needless to say was a mere name. The
Graeco-Egyptian soldiery and citizen body of Alexandria probably
had hardly a drop of Macedonian blood in their veins.

Alexandria was accustomed to such dynastic disruptions. The rioting
over, the people were ready to go back to the paper and linen
factories, and willing to call Ptolemaeus the "Son of Ra," or "King,"
until his sister should defeat him in battle. Cornelia grieved that
Cleopatra should thus be forced into exile. She had grown more and
more intimate with the queen. The first glamour of Cleopatra's
presence had worn away. Cornelia saw her as a woman very beautiful,
very wilful, gifted with every talent, yet utterly lacking that moral
stability which would have been the crown of a perfect human organism.
The two women had grown more and more in friendship and intimacy; and
when Cornelia studied in detail the dark, and often hideous, coils and
twistings of the history of the Hellenistic royal families, the more
vividly she realized that Cleopatra was the heiress of generations of
legalized license,[181] of cultured sensuality, of veneered cruelty,
and sheer blood-thirstiness. Therefore Cornelia had pitied, not
blamed, the queen, and, now that misfortune had fallen upon her, was
distressed for the plight of Cleopatra.

[181] As, for instance, the repeated wedlock of brothers and sisters
among the Ptolemies.

That Cornelia had been an intimate of the queen was perfectly well
known in Alexandria. In fact, Cleomenes himself was of sufficiently
high rank to make any guest he might long entertain more or less of a
public personage. Cornelia was a familiar sight to the crowds, as she
drove daily on the streets and attended the theatre. Cleomenes began
to entertain suspicions that the new government w