concerned; but who ever saw an Aphrodite philosophizing and reading
serious books? I have disturbed you in grave studies no doubt; what is
the book you are rolling up, fair Zoe?"

"The sacred book of the Jews, Sire," replied Zoe; "one that I know you
do not love."

"And you--who read Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, and Plato--do you like it?"
asked Euergetes.

"I find passages in it which show a profound knowledge of life, and
others of which no one can dispute the high poetic flight," replied
Cleopatra. "Much of it has no doubt a thoroughly barbarian twang, and it
is particularly in the Psalms--which we have now been reading, and which
might be ranked with the finest hymns--that I miss the number and rhythm
of the syllables, the observance of a fixed metre--in short, severity of
form. David, the royal poet, was no less possessed by the divinity when
he sang to his lyre than other poets have been, but he does not seem to
have known that delight felt by our poets in overcoming the difficulties
they have raised for themselves. The poet should slavishly obey the laws
he lays down for himself of his own free-will, and subordinate to them
every word, and yet his matter and his song should seem to float on a
free and soaring wing. Now, even the original Hebrew text of the Psalms
has no metrical laws."

"I could well dispense with them," replied Euergetes; "Plato too
disdained to measure syllables, and I know passages in his works which
are nevertheless full of the highest poetic beauty. Besides, it has been
pointed out to me that even the Hebrew poems, like the Egyptian, follow
certain rules, which however I might certainly call rhetorical
rather than poetical. The first member in a series of ideas stands in
antithesis to the next, which either re-states the former one in a new
form or sets it in a clearer light by suggesting some contrast. Thus
they avail themselves of the art of the orator--or indeed of the
painter--who brings a light color into juxtaposition with a dark one, in
order to increase its luminous effect. This method and style are indeed
not amiss, and that was the least of all the things that filled me with
aversion for this book, in which besides, there is many a proverb which
may be pleasing to kings who desire to have submissive subjects, and to
fathers who would bring up their sons in obedience to themselves and to
the laws. Even mothers must be greatly comforted by them,--who ask no
more than that their children may get through the world without being
jostled or pushed, and unmolested if possible, that they may live longer
than the oaks or ravens, and be blessed with the greatest possible
number of descendants. Aye! these ordinances are indeed precious to
those who accept them, for they save them the trouble of thinking for
themselves. Besides, the great god of the Jews is said to have dictated
all that this book contains to its writers, just as I dictate to
Philippus, my hump-backed secretary, all that I want said. They regard
everyone as a blasphemer and desecrator who thinks that anything written
in that roll is erroneous, or even merely human. Plato's doctrines are
not amiss, and yet Aristotle had criticised them severely and attempted
to confute them. I myself incline to the views of the Stagyrite, you to
those of the noble Athenian, and how many good and instructive hours we
owe to our discussions over this difference of opinion! And how
amusing it is to listen when the Platonists on the one hand and the
Aristotelians on the other, among the busy threshers of straw in the
Museum at Alexandria, fall together by the ears so vehemently that they
would both enjoy flinging their metal cups at each others' heads--if
the loss of the wine, which I pay for, were not too serious to bear. We
still seek for truth; the Jews believe they possess it entirely.

"Even those among them who most zealously study our philosophers believe
this; and yet the writers of this book know of nothing but actual
present, and their god--who will no more endure another god as his
equal than a citizen's wife will admit a second woman to her husband's
house--is said to have created the world out of nothing for no other
purpose but to be worshipped and feared by its inhabitants.

"Now, given a philosophical Jew who knows his Empedocles--and I grant
there are many such in Alexandria, extremely keen and cultivated
men--what idea can he form in his own mind of 'creation out of nothing?'
Must he not pause to think very seriously when he remembers the
fundamental axiom that 'out of nothing, nothing can come,' and that
nothing which has once existed can ever be completely annihilated? At
any rate the necessary deduction must be that the life of man ends in
that nothingness whence everything in existence has proceeded. To live
and to die according to this book is not highly profitable. I can easily
reconcile myself to the idea of annihilation, as a man who knows how to
value a dreamless sleep after a day brimful of enjoyment--as a man who
if he must cease to be Euergetes would rather spring into the open jaws
of nothingness--but as a philosopher, no, never!"

"You, it is true," replied the queen, "cannot help measuring all and
everything by the intellectual standard exclusively; for the gods, who
endowed you with gifts beyond a thousand others, struck with blindness
or deafness that organ which conveys to our minds any religious or moral
sentiment. If that could see or hear, you could no more exclude the
conviction that these writings are full of the deepest purport than I
can, nor doubt that they have a powerful hold on the mind of the reader.

"They fetter their adherents to a fixed law, but they take all
bitterness out of sorrow by teaching that a stern father sends us
suffering which is represented as being sometimes a means of education,
and sometimes a punishment for transgressing a hard and clearly defined
law. Their god, in his infallible but stern wisdom, sets those who cling
to him on an evil and stony path to prove their strength, and to let
them at last reach the glorious goal which is revealed to them from the
beginning."

"How strange such words as these sound in the mouth of a Greek,"
interrupted Euergetes. "You certainly must be repeating them after the
son of the Jewish high-priest, who defends the cause of his cruel god
with so much warmth and skill."

"I should have thought," retorted Cleopatra, "that this overwhelming
figure of a god would have pleased you, of all men; for I know of no
weakness in you. Quite lately Dositheos, the Jewish centurion--a very
learned man--tried to describe to my husband the one great god to whom
his nation adheres with such obstinate fidelity, but I could not help
thinking of our beautiful and happy gods as a gay company of amorous
lords and pleasure-loving ladies, and comparing them with this stern and
powerful being who, if only he chose to do it, might swallow them all
up, as Chronos swallowed his own children."

"That," exclaimed Euergetes, "is exactly what most provokes me in
this superstition. It crushes our light-hearted pleasure in life, and
whenever I have been reading the book of the Hebrews everything has come
into my mind that I least like to think of. It is like an importunate
creditor that reminds us of our forgotten debts, and I love pleasure
and hate an importunate reminder. And you, pretty one, life blooms for
you--"

"But I," interrupted Cleopatra, "I can admire all that is great; and
does it not seem a bold and grand thing even to you, that the mighty
idea that it is one single power that moves and fills the world, should
be freely and openly declared in the sacred writings of the Jews--an
idea which the Egyptians carefully wrap up and conceal, which the
priests of the Nile only venture to divulge to the most privileged of
those who are initiated into their mysteries, and which--though the
Greek philosophers indeed have fearlessly uttered it--has never been
introduced by any Hellene into the religion of the people? If you were
not so averse to the Hebrew nation, and if you, like my husband and
myself, had diligently occupied yourself with their concerns and their
belief you would be juster to them and to their scriptures, and to the
great creating and preserving spirit, their god--"

"You are confounding this jealous and most unamiable and ill-tempered
tyrant of the universe with the Absolute of Aristotle!" cried Euergetes;
"he stigmatises most of what you and I and all rational Greeks require
for the enjoyment of life as sin--sin upon sin. And yet if my easily
persuadable brother governed at Alexandria, I believe the shrewd
priests might succeed in stamping him as a worshipper of that magnified
schoolmaster, who punishes his untutored brood with fire and torment."

"I cannot deny," replied Cleopatra, "that even to me the doctrine of the
Jews has something very fearful in it, and that to adopt it seems to
me tantamount to confiscating all the pleasures of life.--But enough of
such things, which I should no more relish as a daily food than you
do. Let us rejoice in that we are Hellenes, and let us now go to the
banquet. I fear you have found a very unsatisfactory substitute for what
you sought in coming up here."

"No--no. I feel strangely excited to-day, and my work with Aristarchus
would have led to no issue. It is a pity that we should have begun to
talk of that barbarian rubbish; there are so many other subjects more
pleasing and more cheering to the mind. Do you remember how we used to
read the great tragedians and Plato together?"

"And how you would often interrupt our tutor Agatharchides in his
lectures on geography, to point out some mistake! Did you prosecute
those studies in Cyrene?"

"Of course. It really is a pity, Cleopatra, that we should no longer
live together as we did formerly. There is no one, not even Aristarchus,
with whom I find it more pleasant and profitable to converse and discuss
than with you. If only you had lived at Athens in the time of Pericles,
who knows if you might not have been his friend instead of the immortal
Aspasia. This Memphis is certainly not the right place for you; for a
few months in the year you ought to come to Alexandria, which has now
risen to be superior to Athens."

"I do not know you to-day!" exclaimed Cleopatra, gazing at her brother
in astonishment. "I have never heard you speak so kindly and brotherly
since the death of my mother. You must have some great request to make
of us."

"You see how thankless a thing it is for me to let my heart speak for
once, like other people. I am like the boy in the fable when the wolf
came! I have so often behaved in an unbrotherly fashion that when I show
the aspect of a brother you think I have put on a mask. If I had had
anything special to ask of you I should have waited till to-morrow, for
in this part of the country even a blind beggar does not like to refuse
his lame comrade anything on his birthday."

"If only we knew what you wish for! Philometor and I would do it
more than gladly, although you always want something monstrous. Our
performance to-morrow will--at any rate--but--Zoe, pray be good enough
to retire with the maids; I have a few words to say to my brother
alone."

As soon as the queen's ladies had withdrawn, she went on:

"It is a real grief to use, but the best part of the festival in honor
of your birthday will not be particularly successful, for the priests of
Serapis spitefully refuse us the Hebe about whom Lysias has made us so
curious. Asclepiodorus, it would seem, keeps her in concealment, and
carries his audacity so far as to tell us that someone has carried her
off from the temple. He insinuates that we have stolen her, and demands
her restitution in the name of all his associates."

"You are doing the man an injustice; our dove has followed the lure of
a dove-catcher who will not allow me to have her, and who is now billing
and cooing with her in his own nest. I am cheated, but I can scarcely be
angry with the Roman, for his claim was of older standing than mine."

"The Roman?" asked Cleopatra, rising from her seat and turning pale.
"But that is impossible. You are making common cause with Eulaeus, and
want to set me against Publius Scipio. At the banquet last night you
showed plainly enough your ill-feeling against him."

"You seem to feel more warmly towards him. But before I prove to you
that I am neither lying nor joking, may I enquire what has this man,
this many-named Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, to recommend him above
any handsome well-grown Macedonian, who is resolute in my cause, in the
whole corps of your body guard, excepting his patrician pride? He is as
bitter and ungenial as a sour apple, and all the very best that you--a
subtle thinker, a brilliant and cultivated philosopher--can find to say
is no more appreciated by his meanly cultivated intellect than the odes
of Sappho by a Nubian boatman."

"It is exactly for that," cried the queen, "that I value him; he is
different from all of us; we who--how shall I express myself--who always
think at second-hand, and always set our foot in the rut trodden by the
master of the school we adhere to; who squeeze our minds into the moulds
that others have carved 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 soon
enough to our cost. You have been talking with Eulaeus to-day; Eulaeus,
who fears and hates Publius, and it seems to me that you have hatched
some conspiracy against him; but if you dare to cast a single stone in
his path, to touch a single hair of his head, I will show you that even
a weak woman can be terrible. Nemesis and the Erinnyes from Alecto to
Megaera, the most terrible of all the gods, are women!"

Cleopatra had hissed rather than spoken these words, with her teeth set
with rage, and had raised her small fist to threaten her brother; but
Euergetes preserved a perfect composure till she had ceased speaking.
Then he took a step closer to her, crossed his arms over his breast, and
asked her in the deepest bass of his fine deep voice:

"Are you idiotically in love with this Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica,
or do you purpose to make use of him and his kith and kin in Rome
against me?"

Transported with rage, and without blenching in the least at her
brother's piercing gaze, she hastily retorted: "Up to this moment only
the first perhaps--for what is my husband to me? But if you go on as you
have begun I shall begin to consider how I may make use of his influence
and of his liking for me, on the shores of the Tiber."

"Liking!" cried Euergetes, and he laughed so loud and violently that
Zoe, who was listening at the tent door, gave a little scream, and
Cleopatra drew back a step. "And to think that you--the most prudent
of the prudent--who can hear the dew fall and the grass grow, and smell
here in Memphis the smoke of every fire that is lighted in Alexandria
or in Syria or even in Rome--that you, my mother's daughter, should be
caught over head and ears by a broad-shouldered lout, for all the world
like a clumsy town-girl or a wench at a loom. This ignorant Adonis,
who knows so well how to make use of his own strange and resolute
personality, and of the power that stands in his background, thinks no
more of the hearts he sets in flames than I of the earthen jar out of
which water is drawn when I am thirsty. You think to make use of him by
the 'Tiber; but he has anticipated you, and learns from you all that
is going on by the Nile and everything they most want to know in the
Senate.

"You do not believe me, for no one ever is ready to believe anything
that can diminish his self-esteem--and why should you believe me? I
frankly confess that I do not hesitate to lie when I hope to gain more
by untruth than by 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 will follow your road, Euergetes, and laugh at virtue and truth, and
set the busts of Aristippus and Strato on the pedestals where those of
Zeno and Antisthenes now stand."

"You mean to have the busts of the philosophers moved again?" asked
King Philometor, who, as he entered the tent, had heard the queen's
last words. "And Aristippus is to have the place of honor? I have no
objection--though he teaches that man must subjugate matter and not
become subject to it.--['Mihi res, non me rebus subjungere.']--This
indeed is easier to say than to do, and there is no man to whom it is
more impossible than to a king who has to keep on good terms with Greeks
and Egyptians, as we have, and with Rome as well. And besides all this
to avoid quarrelling with a jealous brother, who shares our kingdom!
If men could only know how much they would have to do as kings only in
reading and writing, they would take care never to struggle for a
crown! Up to this last half hour I have been examining and deciding
applications and petitions. Have you got through yours, Euergetes? Even
more had accumulated for you than for us."

"All were settled in an hour," replied the other promptly. "My eye is
quicker than the mouth of your reader, and my decisions commonly consist
of three words while you dictate long treatises to your scribes. So I
had done when you had scarcely begun, and yet I could tell you at once,
if it were not too tedious a matter, every single case that has come
before me for months, and explain it in all its details."

"That I could not indeed," said Philometor modestly, "but I know and
admire your swift intelligence and accurate memory."

"You see I am more fit for a king than you are;" laughed Euergetes. "You
are too gentle and debonair for a throne! Hand over your government to
me. I will fill your treasury every year with gold. I beg you now, come
to Alexandria with Cleopatra for good, and share with me the palace and
the gardens in the Bruchion. I will nominate your little Philopator heir
to the throne, for I have no wish to contract a permanent tie with
any woman, as Cleopatra belongs to you. This is a bold proposal, but
reflect, Philometor, if you were to accept it, how much time it would
give you for your music, your disputations with the Jews, and all your
other favorite occupations."

"You never know how far you may go with your jest!" interrupted
Cleopatra. "Besides, you devote quite as much time to your studies
in philology and natural history as he does to music and improving
conversations with his learned friends."

"Just so," assented Philometor, "and you may be counted among the sages
of the Museum with far more reason than I."

"But the difference between us," replied Euergetes, "is that I despise
all the philosophical prattlers and rubbish-collectors in Alexandria
almost to the point of hating them, while for science I have as great a
passion as for a lover. You, on the contrary, make much of the learned
men, but trouble yourself precious little about science."

"Drop the subject, pray," begged Cleopatra. "I believe that you two have
never yet been together for half an hour without Euergetes having begun
some dispute, and Philometor having at last given in, to pacify him.
Our guests must have been waiting for us a long time. Had Publius Scipio
made his appearance?"

"He had sent to excuse himself," replied the king as he scratched the
poll of Cleopatra's parrot, parting its feathers with the tips of his
fingers. "Lysias, the Corinthian, is sitting below, and he says he does
not know where his friend can be gone."

"But we know very well," said Euergetes, casting an ironical glance
at the queen. "It is pleasant to be with Philometor and Cleopatra, but
better still with Eros and Hebe. Sister, you look pale--shall I call for
Zoe?"

Cleopatra shook her head in negation, but she dropped into a seat,
and sat stooping, with her head bowed over her knees as if she were
dreadfully tired. Euergetes turned his back on her, and spoke to his
brother of indifferent subjects, while she drew lines, some straight and
some crooked, with her fan-stick through the pile of the soft rug on the
floor, and sat gazing thoughtfully at her feet. As she sat thus her
eye was caught by her sandals, richly set with precious stones, and the
slender toes she had so often contemplated with pleasure; but now the
sight of them seemed to vex her, for in obedience to a swift impulse
she loosened the straps, pushed off her right sandal with her left foot,
kicked it from her, and said, turning to her husband:

"It is late and I do not feel well, and you may sup without me."

"By the healing Isis!" exclaimed Philometor, going up to her. "You look
suffering. Shall I send for the physicians? Is it really nothing more
than your usual headache? The gods be thanked! But that you should be
unwell just to-day! I had so much to say to you; and the chief thing
of all was that we are still a long way from completeness in our
preparations for our performance. If this luckless Hebe were not--"

"She is in good hands," interrupted Euergetes. "The Roman, Publius
Scipio, has taken her to a place of safety; perhaps in order to present
her to me to morrow morning in return for the horses from Cyrene which
I sent him to-day. How brightly your eyes sparkle, sister--with joy no
doubt at this good idea. This evening, I dare say he is rehearsing the
little one in her part that she may perform it well to-morrow. If we are
mistaken--if Publius is ungrateful and proposes keeping the dove, then
Thais, your pretty Athenian waiting-woman, may play the part of Hebe.
What do you think of that suggestion, Cleopatra?"

"That I forbid such jesting with me!" cried the queen vehemently.
"No one has any consideration for me--no one pities me, and I suffer
fearfully! Euergetes scorns me--you, Philometor, would be glad to drag
me down! If only the banquet is not interfered with, and so long as
nothing spoils your pleasure!--Whether I die or no, no one cares!"

With these words the queen burst into tears, and roughly pushed away her
husband as he endeavored to soothe her. At last she dried her eyes, and
said: "Go down-the guests are waiting."

"Immediately, my love," replied Philometor. "But one thing I must tell
you, for I know that it will arouse your sympathy. The Roman read to you
the petition for pardon for Philotas, the chief of the Chrematistes
and 'relative of the king,' which contains such serious charges against
Eulaeus. I was ready with all my heart to grant your wish and to pardon
the man who is the father of these miserable water-bearers; but,
before having the decree drawn up, I had the lists of the exiles to the
gold-mines carefully looked through, and there it was discovered that
Philotas and his wife have both been dead more than half a year. Death
has settled this question, and I cannot grant to Publius the first
service he has asked of me--asked with great urgency too. I am sorry for
this, both for his sake and for that of poor Philotas, who was held in
high esteem by our mother."

"May the ravens devour them!" answered Cleopatra, pressing her forehead
against the ivory frame which surrounded the stuffed back of her seat.
"Once more I beg of you excuse me from all further speech." This time
the two kings obeyed her wishes. When Euergetes offered her his hand she
said with downcast eyes, and poking her fan-stick into the wool of the
carpet:

"I will visit you early to-morrow."

"After the first sacrifice," added Euergetes. "If I know you well,
something that you will then hear will please you greatly; very greatly
indeed, I should think. Bring the children with you; that I ask of you
as a birthday request."

CHAPTER XX.

The royal chariot in which Klea was standing, wrapped in the cloak and
wearing the hat of the captain of the civic guard, went swiftly and
without stopping through the streets of Memphis. As long as she saw
houses with lighted windows on each side of the way, and met riotous
soldiers and quiet citizens going home from the taverns, or from working
late in their workshops, with lanterns in their hands or carried by
their slaves--so long her predominant feeling was one of hatred to
Publius; and mixed with this was a sentiment altogether new to her--a
sentiment that made her blood boil, and her heart now stand still
and then again beat wildly--the thought that he might be a wretched
deceiver. Had he not attempted to entrap one of them--whether her sister
or herself it was all the same--wickedly to betray her, and to get her
into his power!

"With me," thought she, "he could not hope to gain his evil ends,
and when he saw that I knew how to protect myself he lured the poor
unresisting child away with him, in order to ruin her and to drag her
into shame and misery. Just like Rome herself, who seizes on one country
after another to make them her own, so is this ruthless man. No sooner
had that villain Eulaeus' letter reached him, than he thought himself
justified in believing that I too was spellbound by a glance from his
eyes, and would spread my wings to fly into his arms; and so he put
out his greedy hand to catch me too, and threw aside the splendor and
delights of a royal banquet to hurry by night out into the desert,
and to risk a hideous death--for the avenging deities still punish the
evildoer."

By this time she was shrouded in total darkness, for the moon was still
hidden by black clouds. Memphis was already behind her, and the chariot
was passing through a tall-stemmed palm-grove, where even at mid-day
deep shades intermingled with the sunlight. When, just at this spot,
the thought once more pierced her soul that the seducer was devoted to
death, she felt as though suddenly a bright glaring light had flashed up
in her and round her, and she could have broken out into a shout of joy
like one who, seeking retribution for blood, places his foot at last on
the breast of his fallen foe. She clenched her teeth tightly and grasped
her girdle, in which she had stuck the knife given her by the smith.

If the charioteer by her side had been Publius, she would have stabbed
him to the heart with the weapon with delight, and then have thrown
herself under the horses' hoofs and the brazen wheels of the chariot.

But no! Still more gladly would she have found him dying in the desert,
and before his heart had ceased to beat have shouted in his ear how much
she hated him; and then, when his breast no longer heaved a breath--then
she would have flung herself upon him, and have kissed his dimmed eyes.

Her wildest thoughts of vengeance were as inseparable from tender pity
and the warmest longings of a heart overflowing with love, as the dark
waters of a river are from the brighter flood of a stream with which
it has recently mingled. All the passionate impulses which had hitherto
been slumbering in her soul were set free, and now raised their
clamorous voices as she was whirled across the desert through the gloom
of night. The wishes roused in her breast by her hatred appealing to her
on one side and her love singing in her ear, in tempting flute-tones, on
the other, jostled and hustled one another, each displacing the other as
they crowded her mind in wild confusion. As she proceeded on her journey
she felt that she could have thrown herself like a tigress on her
victim, and yet--like an outcast woman--have flung herself at Publius'
knees in supplication for the love that was denied her. She had lost all
idea of time and distance, and started as from a wild and bewildering
dream when the chariot suddenly halted, and the driver said in his rough
tones:

"Here we are, I must turn back again."

She shuddered, drew the cloak more closely round her, sprang out on to
the road, and stood there motionless till the charioteer said:

"I have not spared my horses, my noble gentleman. Won't you give me
something to get a drop of wine?" Klea's whole possessions were two
silver drachma, of which she herself owned one and the other belonged to
Irene. On the last anniversary but one of his mother's death, the king
had given at the temple a sum to be divided among all the attendants,
male and female, who served Serapis, and a piece of silver had fallen to
the share of herself and her sister. Klea had them both about her in a
little bag, which also contained a ring that her mother had given her at
parting, and the amulet belonging to Serapion. The girl took out the two
silver coins and gave them to the driver, who, after testing the liberal
gift with his fingers, cried out as he turned his horses:

"A pleasant night to you, and may Aphrodite and all the Loves be
favorable!"

"Irene's drachma!" muttered Klea to herself, as the chariot rolled away.
The sweet form of her sister rose before her mind; she recalled the hour
when the girl--still but a child--had entrusted it to her, because she
lost everything unless Klea took charge of it for her.

"Who will watch her and care for her now?" she asked herself, and she
stood thinking, trying to defend herself against the wild wishes which
again began to stir in her, and to collect her scattered thoughts. She
had involuntarily avoided the beam of light which fell across the road
from the tavern-window, and yet she could not help raising her eyes and
looking along it, and she found herself looking through the darkness
which enveloped her, straight into the faces of two men whose gaze was
directed to the very spot where she was standing. And what faces they
were that she saw! One, a fat face, framed in thick hair and a short,
thick and ragged beard, was of a dusky brown and as coarse and brutal as
the other was smooth, colorless and lean, cruel and crafty. The eyes of
the first of these ruffians were prominent, weak and bloodshot, with a
fixed glassy stare, while those of the other seemed always to be on the
watch with a restless and uneasy leer.

These were Euergetes' assassins--they must be! Spellbound with terror
and revulsion she stood quite still, fearing only that the ruffians
might hear the beating of her heart, for she felt as if it were a hammer
swung up and down in an empty space, and beating with loud echoes, now
in her bosom and now in her throat.

"The young gentleman must have gone round behind the tavern--he knows
the shortest way to the 'tombs. Let us go after him, and finish off the
business at once," said the broad-shouldered villain in a hoarse whisper
that broke down every now and then, and which seemed to Klea even more
repulsive than the monster's face.

"So that he may hear us go after him-stupid!" answered the other. "When
he has been waiting for his sweetheart about a quarter of an hour I
will call his name in a woman's voice, and at his first step towards the
desert do you break his neck with the sand-bag. We have plenty of time
yet, for it must still be a good half hour before midnight."

"So much the better," said the other. "Our wine-jar is not nearly empty
yet, and we paid the lazy landlord for it in advance, before he crept
into bed."

"You shall only drink two cups more," said the punier villain. "For this
time we have to do with a sturdy fellow, Setnam is not with us now to
lend a hand in the work, and the dead meat must show no gaping thrusts
or cuts. My teeth are not like yours when you are fasting--even cooked
food must not be too tough for them to chew it, now-a-days. If you soak
yourself in drink and fail in your blow, and I am not ready with the
poisoned stiletto the thing won't come off neatly. But why did not the
Roman let his chariot wait?"

"Aye! why did he let it go away?" asked the other staring open-mouthed
in the direction where the sound of wheels was still to be heard. His
companion mean while laid his hand to his ear, and listened. Both were
silent for a few minutes, then the thin one said:

"The chariot has stopped at the first tavern. So much the better. The
Roman has valuable cattle in his shafts, and at the inn down there,
there is a shed for horses. Here in this hole there is hardly a stall
for an ass, and nothing but sour wine and mouldy beer. I don't like the
rubbish, and save my coin for Alexandria and white Mariotic; that is
strengthening and purifies the blood. For the present I only wish we
were as well off as those horses; they will have plenty of time to
recover their breath."

"Yes, plenty of time," answered the other with a broad grin, and then he
with his companion withdrew into the room to fill his cup.

Klea too could hear that the chariot which had brought her hither,
had halted at the farther tavern, but it did not occur to her that
the driver had gone in to treat himself to wine with half of Irene's
drachma. The horses should make up for the lost time, and they could
easily do it, for when did the king's banquets ever end before midnight?

As soon as Plea saw that the assassins were filling their earthen cups,
she slipped softly on tiptoe behind the tavern; the moon came out from
behind the clouds for a few minutes, she sought and found the short way
by the desert-path to the Apis-tombs, and hastened rapidly along it. She
looked straight before her, for whenever she glanced at the road-side,
and her eye was caught by some dried up shrub of the desert, silvery
in the pale moonlight, she fancied she saw behind it the face of a
murderer.

The skeletons of fallen beasts standing up out of the dust, and the
bleached jawbones of camels and asses, which shone much whiter than the
desert-sand on which they lay, seemed to have come to life and motion,
and made her think of the tiger-teeth of the bearded ruffian.

The clouds of dust driven in her face by the warm west wind, which had
risen higher, increased her alarm, for they were mingled with the colder
current of the night-breeze; and again and again she felt as if spirits
were driving her onwards with their hot breath, and stroking her face
with their cold fingers. Every thing that her senses perceived was
transformed by her heated imagination into a fearful something; but more
fearful and more horrible than anything she heard, than any phantom that
met her eye in the ghastly moonlight, were her own thoughts of what
was to be done now, in the immediate future--of the fearful fate that
threatened the Roman and Irene; and she was incapable of separating one
from the other in her mind, for one influence alone possessed her,
heart and soul: dread, dread; the same boundless, nameless, deadly
dread--alike of mortal peril and irremediable shame, and of the airiest
phantoms and the merest nothings.

A large black cloud floated slowly across the moon and utter darkness
hid everything around, even the undefined forms which her imagination
had turned to images of dread. She was forced to moderate her pace, and
find her way, feeling each step; and just as to a child some hideous
form that looms before him vanishes into nothingness when he covers his
eyes with his hand, so the profound darkness which now enveloped her,
suddenly released her soul from a hundred imaginary terrors.

She stood still, drew a deep breath, collected the whole natural force
of her will, and asked herself what she could do to avert the horrid
issue.

Since seeing the murderers every thought of revenge, every wish to
punish the seducer with death, had vanished from her mind; one desire
alone possessed her now--that of rescuing him, the man, from the
clutches of these ravening beasts. Walking slowly onwards she repeated
to herself every word she had heard that referred to Publius and Irene
as spoken by Euergetes, Eulaeus, the recluse, and the assassins, and
recalled every step she had taken since she left the temple; thus she
brought herself back to the consciousness that she had come out and
faced danger and endured terror, solely and exclusively for Irene's
sake. The image of her sister rose clearly before her mind in all its
bright charm, undimmed by any jealous grudge which, indeed, ever
since her passion had held her in its toils had never for the smallest
fraction of a minute possessed her.

Irene had grown up under her eye, sheltered by her care, in the sunshine
of her love. To take care of her, to deny herself, and bear the severest
fatigue for her had been her pleasure; and now as she appealed to her
father--as she wont to do--as if he were present, and asked him in an
inaudible cry: "Tell me, have I not done all for her that I could do?"
and said to herself that he could not possibly answer her appeal but
with assent, her eyes filled with tears; the bitterness and discontent
which had lately filled her breast gradually disappeared, and a gentle,
calm, refreshing sense of satisfaction came over her spirit, like a
cooling breeze after a scorching day.

As she now again stood still, straining her eyes which were growing more
accustomed to the darkness, to discover one of the temples at the end
of the alley of sphinxes, suddenly and unexpectedly at her right hand a
solemn and many-voiced hymn of lamentation fell upon her ear. This was
from the priests of Osiris-Apis who were performing the sacred mysteries
of their god, at midnight, on the roof of the temple. She knew the hymn
well--a lament for the deceased Osiris which implored him with urgent
supplication to break the power of death, to rise again, to bestow new
light and new vitality on the world and on men, and to vouchsafe to all
the departed a new existence.

The pious lament had a powerful effect on her excited spirit. Her
parents too perhaps had passed through death, and were now taking part
in the conduct of the destiny of the world and of men in union with the
life giving God. Her breath came fast, she threw up her arms, and, for
the first time since in her wrath she had turned her back on the holy
of holies in the temple of Serapis, she poured forth her whole soul with
passionate fervor in a deep and silent prayer for strength to fulfil her
duty to the end,--for some sign to show her the way to save Irene from
misfortune, and Publius from death. And as she prayed she felt no
longer alone--no, it seemed to her that she stood face to face with
the invincible Power which protects the good, in whom she now again had
faith, though for Him she knew no name; as a daughter, pursued by foes,
might clasp her powerful father's knees and claim his succor.

She had not stood thus with uplifted arms for many minutes when the
moon, once more appearing, recalled her to herself and to actuality.
She now perceived close to her, at hardly a hundred paces from where she
stood, the line of sphinxes by the side of which lay the tombs of Apis
near which she was to await Publius. Her heart began to beat faster
again, and her dread of her own weakness revived. In a few minutes she
must meet the Roman, and, involuntarily putting up her hand to smooth
her hair, she was reminded that she still wore Glaucus' hat on her head
and his cloak wrapped round her shoulders. Lifting up her heart again
in a brief prayer for a calm and collected mind, she slowly arranged her
dress and its folds, and as she did so the key of the tomb-cave, which
she still had about her, fell under her hand. An idea flashed through
her brain--she caught at it, and with hurried breath followed it out,
till she thought she had now hit upon the right way to preserve from
death the man who was so rich and powerful, who had given her nothing
but taken everything from her, and to whom, nevertheless, she--the poor
water-bearer whom he had thought to trifle with--could now bestow the
most precious of the gifts of the immortals, namely, life.

Serapion had said, and she was willing to believe, that Publius was not
base, and he certainly was not one of those who could prove ungrateful
to a preserver. She longed to earn the right to demand something of him,
and that could be nothing else but that he should give up her sister and
bring Irene back to her.

When could it be that he had come to an understanding with the
inexperienced and easily wooed maiden? How ready she must have been to
clasp the hand held out to her by this man! Nothing surprised her in
Irene, the child of the present; she could comprehend too that Irene's
charm might quickly win the heart even of a grave and serious man.

And yet--in all the processions it was never Irene that he had gazed at,
but always herself, and how came it to pass that he had given a prompt
and ready assent to the false invitation to go out to meet her in the
desert at midnight? Perhaps she was still nearer to his heart than
Irene, and if gratitude drew him to her with fresh force then--aye
then--he might perhaps woo her, and forget his pride and her lowly
position, and ask her to be his wife.

She thought this out fully, but before she had reached the half circle
enclosed by the Philosophers' busts the question occurred to her mind.
And Irene?

Had she gone with him and quitted her without bidding her farewell
because the young heart was possessed with a passionate love for
Publius--who was indeed the most lovable of men? And he? Would he
indeed, out of gratitude for what she hoped to do for him, make up his
mind, if she demanded it, to make her Irene his wife--the poor but more
than lovely daughter of a noble house?

And if this were possible, if these two could be happy in love and
honor, should she Klea come between the couple to divide them? Should
she jealously snatch Irene from his arms and carry her back to the
gloomy temple which now--after she had fluttered awhile in sportive
freedom in the sunny air--would certainly seem to her doubly
sinister and unendurable? Should she be the one to plunge Irene into
misery--Irene, her child, the treasure confided to her care, whom she
had sworn to cherish?

"No, and again no," she said resolutely. "She was born for happiness,
and I for endurance, and if I dare beseech thee to grant me one thing
more, O thou infinite Divinity! it is that Thou wouldst cut out from my
soul this love which is eating into my heart as though it were rotten
wood, and keep me far from envy and jealousy when I see her happy in his
arms. It is hard--very hard to drive one's own heart out into the desert
in order that spring may blossom in that of another: but it is well
so--and my mother would commend me and my father would say I had acted
after his own heart, and in obedience to the teaching of the great men
on these pedestals. Be still, be still my aching heart--there--that is
right!"

Thus reflecting she went past the busts of Zeno and Chrysippus, glancing
at their features distinct in the moonlight: and her eyes falling on
the smooth slabs of stone with which the open space was paved, her own
shadow caught her attention, black and sharply defined, and exactly
resembling that of some man travelling from one town to another in his
cloak and broad-brimmed hat.

"Just like a man!" she muttered to herself; and as, at the same moment,
she saw a figure resembling her own, and, like herself, wearing a hat,
appear near the entrance to the tombs, and fancied she recognized it as
Publius, a thought, a scheme, flashed through her excited brain, which
at first appalled her, but in the next instant filled her with the
ecstasy which an eagle may feel when he spreads his mighty wings and
soars above the dust of the earth into the pure and infinite ether. Her
heart beat high, she breathed deeply and slowly, but she advanced to
meet the Roman, drawn up to her full height like a queen, who goes
forward to receive some equal sovereign; her hat, which she had taken
off, in her left hand, and the Smith's key in her right-straight on
towards the door of the Apis-tombs.

CHAPTER XXI.

The man whom Klea had seen was in fact none other than Publius. He was
now at the end of a busy day, for after he had assured himself that
Irene had been received by the sculptor and his wife, and welcomed as if
she were their own child, he had returned to his tent to write once more
a dispatch to Rome. But this he could not accomplish, for his friend
Lysias paced restlessly up and down by him as he sat, and as often as
he put the reed to the papyrus disturbed him with enquiries about the
recluse, the sculptor, and their rescued protegee.

When, finally, the Corinthian desired to know whether he, Publius,
considered Irene's eyes to be brown or blue, he had sprung up
impatiently, and exclaimed indignantly:

"And supposing they were red or green, what would it matter to me!"

Lysias seemed pleased rather than vexed with this reply, and he was on
the point of confessing to his friend that Irene had caused in his heart
a perfect conflagration--as of a forest or a city in flames--when a
master of the horse had appeared from Euergetes, to present the four
splendid horses from Cyrene, which his master requested the noble Roman
Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica to accept in token of his friendship.

The two friends, who both were judges and lovers of horses, spent
at least an hour in admiring the fine build and easy paces of these
valuable beasts. Then came a chamberlain from the queen to invite
Publius to go to her at once.

The Roman followed the messenger after a short delay in his tent, in
order to take with him the gems representing the marriage of Hebe, for
on his way from the sculptor's to the palace it had occurred to him
that he would offer them to the queen, after he had informed her of
the parentage of the two water-carriers. Publius had keen eyes, and the
queen's weaknesses had not escaped him, but he had never suspected
her of being capable of abetting her licentious brother in forcibly
possessing himself of the innocent daughter of a noble father. He now
purposed to make her a present--as in some degree a substitute for
the representation his friend had projected, and which had come
to nothing--of the picture which she had hoped to find pleasure in
reproducing.

Cleopatra received him on her roof, a favor of which few could boast;
she allowed him to sit at her feet while she reclined on her couch, and
gave him to understand, by every glance of her eyes and every word she
spoke, that his presence was a happiness to her, and filled her with
passionate delight. Publius soon contrived to lead the conversation to
the subject of the innocent parents of the water-bearers, who had been
sent off to the goldmines; but Cleopatra interrupted his speech in their
favor and asked him plainly, undisguisedly, and without any agitation,
whether it was true that he himself desired to win the youthful Hebe.
And she met his absolute denial with such persistent and repeated
expressions of disbelief, assuming at last a tone of reproach, that he
grew vexed and broke out into a positive declaration that he regarded
lying as unmanly and disgraceful, and could endure any insult rather
than a doubt of his veracity.

Such a vehement and energetic remonstrance from a man she had
distinguished was a novelty to Cleopatra, and she did not take it amiss,
for she might now believe--what she much wished to believe--that Publius
wanted to have nothing to do with the fair Hebe, that Eulaeus had
slandered her friend, and that Zoe had been in error when, after
her vain expedition to the temple--from which she had then just
returned--she had told her that the Roman was Irene's lover, and must at
the earliest hour have betrayed to the girl herself, or to the priests
in the Serapeum, what was their purpose regarding her.

In the soul of this noble youth there was nothing false--there could be
nothing false! And she, who was accustomed never to hear a word from
the men who surrounded her without asking herself with what aim it was
spoken, and how much of it was dissimulation or downright falsehood,
trusted the Roman, and was so happy in her trust that, full of gracious
gaiety, she herself invited Publius to give her the recluse's petition
to read. The Roman at once gave her the roll, saying that since it
contained so much that was sad, much as he hoped she would make herself
acquainted with it, he felt himself called upon also to give her
some pleasure, though in truth but a very small one. Thus speaking he
produced the gems, and she showed as much delight over this little work
of art as if, instead of being a rich queen and possessed of the finest
engraved gems in the world, she were some poor girl receiving her first
gift of some long-desired gold ornament.

"Exquisite, splendid!" she cried again and again. "And besides, they
are an imperishable memorial of you, dear friend, and of your visit to
Egypt. I will have them set with the most precious stones; even diamonds
will seem worthless to me compared with this gift from you. This has
already decided my sentence as to Eulaeus and his unhappy victims
before I read your petition. Still I will read that roll, and read
it attentively, for my husband regards Eulaeus as a useful--almost an
indispensable-tool, and I must give good reasons for my verdict and for
the pardon. I believe in the innocence of the unfortunate Philotas,
but if he had committed a hundred murders, after this present I would
procure his freedom all the same."

The words vexed the Roman, and they made her who had spoken them in
order to please him appear to him at that moment more in the light of a
corruptible official than of a queen. He found the time hang heavy
that he spent with Cleopatra, who, in spite of his reserve, gave him
to understand with more and more insistence how warmly she felt towards
him; but the more she talked and the more she told him, the more silent
he became, and he breathed a sigh of relief when her husband at last
appeared to fetch him and Cleopatra away to their mid-day meal.

At table Philometor promised to take up the cause of Philotas and his
wife, both of whom he had known, and whose fate had much grieved him;
still he begged his wife and the Roman not to bring Eulaeus to justice
till Euergetes should have left Memphis, for, during his brother's
presence, beset as he was with difficulties, he could not spare him; and
if he might judge of Publius by himself he cared far more to reinstate
the innocent in their rights, and to release them from their miserable
lot--a lot of which he had only learned the full horrors quite recently
from his tutor Agatharchides--than to drag a wretch before the judges
to-morrow or the day after, who was unworthy of his anger, and who at
any rate should not escape punishment.

Before the letter from Asclepiodorus--stating the mistaken hypothesis
entertained by the priests of Serapis that Irene had been carried off
by the king's order--could reach the palace, Publius had found an
opportunity of excusing himself and quitting the royal couple. Not even
Cleopatra herself could raise any objection to his distinct assurance
that he must write to Rome today on matters of importance. Philometor's
favor was easy to win, and as soon as he was alone with his wife he
could not find words enough in praise of the noble qualities of the
young man, who seemed destined in the future to be of the greatest
service to him and to his interests at Rome, and whose friendly attitude
towards himself was one more advantage that he owed--as he was happy to
acknowledge--to the irresistible talents and grace of his wife.

When Publius had quitted the palace and hurried back to his tent, he
felt like a journeyman returning from a hard day's labor, or a man
acquitted from a serious charge; like one who had lost his way, and has
found the right road again.

The heavy air in the arbors and alleys of the embowered gardens seemed
to him easier to breathe than the cool breeze that fanned Cleopatra's
raised roof. He felt the queen's presence to be at once exciting and
oppressive, and in spite of all that was flattering to himself in the
advances made to him by the powerful princess, it was no more gratifying
to his taste than an elegantly prepared dish served on gold plate, which
we are forced to partake of though poison may be hidden in it, and which
when at last we taste it is sickeningly sweet.

Publius was an honest man, and it seemed to him--as to all who resemble
him--that love which was forced upon him was like a decoration of honor
bestowed by a hand which we do not respect, and that we would rather
refuse than accept; or like praise out of all proportion to our merit,
which may indeed delight a fool, but rouses the indignation rather than
the gratitude of a wise man. It struck him too that Cleopatra intended
to make use of him, in the first place as a toy to amuse herself, and
then as a useful instrument or underling, and this so gravely incensed
and discomfited the serious and sensitive young man that he would
willingly have quitted Memphis and Egypt at once and without any
leave-taking. However, it was not quite easy for him to get away, for
all his thoughts of Cleopatra were mixed up with others of Klea, as
inseparably as when we picture to ourselves the shades of night, the
tender light of the calm moon rises too before our fancy.

Having saved Irene, his present desire was to restore her parents to
liberty; to quit Egypt without having seen Klea once more seemed to him
absolutely impossible. He endeavored once more to revive in his mind the
image of her proud tall figure; he felt he must tell her that she was
beautiful, a woman worthy of a king--that he was her friend and hated
injustice, and was ready to sacrifice much for justice's sake and for
her own in the service of her parents and herself. To-day again, before
the banquet, he purposed to go to the temple, and to entreat the recluse
to help him to an interview with his adopted daughter.

If only Klea could know beforehand what he had been doing for Irene and
their parents she must surely let him see that her haughty eyes could
look kindly on him, must offer him her hand in farewell, and then he
should clasp it in both his, and press it to his breast. Then would he
tell her in the warmest and most inspired words he could command how
happy he was to have seen her and known her, and how painful it was to
bid her farewell; perhaps she might leave her hand in his, and give
him some kind word in return. One kind word--one phrase of thanks from
Klea's firm but beautiful mouth--seemed to him of higher value than a
kiss or an embrace from the great and wealthy Queen of Egypt.

When Publius was excited he could be altogether carried away by a sudden
sweep of passion, but his imagination was neither particularly lively
nor glowing. While his horses were being harnessed, and then while
he was driving to the Serapeum, the tall form of the water-bearer was
constantly before him; again and again he pictured himself holding her
hand instead of the reins, and while he repeated to himself all he meant
to say at parting, and in fancy heard her thank him with a trembling
voice for his valuable help, and say that she would never forget him, he
felt his eyes moisten--unused as they had been to tears for many years.
He could not help recalling the day when he had taken leave of his
family to go to the wars for the first time. Then it had not been his
own eyes but his mother's that had sparkled through tears, and it struck
him that Klea, if she could be compared to any other woman, was most
like to that noble matron to whom he owed his life, and that she might
stand by the side of the daughter of the great Scipio Africanus like a
youthful Minerva by the side of Juno, the stately mother of the gods.

His disappointment was great when he found the door of the temple
closed, and was forced to return to Memphis without having seen either
Klea or the recluse.

He could try again to-morrow to accomplish what had been impossible
to-day, but his wish to see the girl he loved, rose to a torturing
longing, and as he sat once more in his tent to finish his second
despatch to Rome the thought of Klea came again to disturb his serious
work. Twenty times he started up to collect his thoughts, and as often
flung away his reed as the figure of the water-bearer interposed between
him and the writing under his hand; at last, out of patience with
himself, he struck the table in front of him with some force, set his
fists in his sides hard enough to hurt himself, and held them there for
a minute, ordering himself firmly and angrily to do his duty before he
thought of anything else.

His iron will won the victory; by the time it was growing dusk the
despatch was written. He was in the very act of stamping the wax of
the seal with the signet of his family--engraved on the sardonyx of his
ring--when one of his servants announced a black slave who desired to
speak with him. Publius ordered that he should be admitted, and the
negro handed him the tile on which Eulaeus had treacherously written
Klea's invitation to meet her at midnight near the Apis-tombs. His
enemy's crafty-looking emissary seemed to the young man as a messenger
from the gods; in a transport of haste and, without the faintest shadow
of a suspicion he wrote, "I will be there," on the luckless piece of
clay.

Publius was anxious to give the letter to the Senate, which he had just
finished, with his own hand, and privately, to the messenger who had
yesterday brought him the despatch from Rome; and as he would rather
have set aside an invitation to carry off a royal treasure that same
night than have neglected to meet Klea, he could not in any case be a
guest at the king's banquet, though Cleopatra would expect to see him
there in accordance with his promise. At this juncture he was annoyed to
miss his friend Lysias, for he wished to avoid offending the queen;
and the Corinthian, who at this moment was doubtless occupied in some
perfectly useless manner, was as clever in inventing plausible excuses
as he himself was dull in such matters. He hastily wrote a few lines to
the friend who shared his tent, requesting him to inform the king that
he had been prevented by urgent business from appearing among his guests
that evening; then he threw on his cloak, put on his travelling-hat
which shaded his face, and proceeded on foot and without any servant to
the harbor, with his letter in one hand and a staff in the other.

The soldiers and civic guards which filled the courts of the palace,
taking him for a messenger, did not challenge him as he walked swiftly
and firmly on, and so, without being detained or recognized, he reached
the inn by the harbor, where he was forced to wait an hour before the
messenger came home from the gay strangers' quarter where he had gone to
amuse himself. He had a great deal to talk of with this man, who was to
set out next morning for Alexandria and Rome; but Publius hardly gave
himself the necessary time, for he meant to start for the meeting place
in the Necropolis indicated by Klea, and well-known to himself, a
full hour before midnight, although he knew that he could reach his
destination in a very much shorter time.

The sun seems to move too slowly to those who long and wait, and a
planet would be more likely to fail in punctuality than a lover when
called by love.

In order to avoid observation he did not take a chariot but a strong
mule which the host of the inn lent him with pleasure; for the Roman
was so full of happy excitement in the hope of meeting Klea that he
had slipped a gold piece into the small, lightly-closed fingers of the
innkeeper's pretty child, which lay asleep on a bench by the side of the
table, besides paying double as much for the country wine he had drunk
as if it had been fine Falernian and without asking for his reckoning.
The host looked at him in astonishment when, finally, he sprang with a
grand leap on to the back of the tall beast, without laying his hand on
it; and it seemed even to Publius himself as though he had never since
boyhood felt so fresh, so extravagantly happy as at this moment.

The road to the tombs from the harbor was a different one to that which
led thither from the king's palace, and which Klea had taken, nor did it
lead past the tavern in which she had seen the murderers. By day it was
much used by pilgrims, and the Roman could not miss it even by night,
for the mule he was riding knew it well. That he had learned, for in
answer to his question as to what the innkeeper kept the beast for he
had said that it was wanted every day to carry pilgrims arriving from
Upper Egypt to the temple of Serapis and the tombs of the sacred bulls;
he could therefore very decidedly refuse the host's offer to send a
driver with the beast. All who saw him set out supposed that he was
returning to the city and the palace.

Publius rode through the streets of the city at an easy trot, and, as
the laughter of soldiers carousing in a tavern fell upon his ear, he
could have joined heartily in their merriment. But when the silent
desert lay around him, and the stars showed him that he would be much
too early at the appointed place, he brought the mule to a slower pace,
and the nearer he came to his destination the graver he grew, and the
stronger his heart beat. It must be something important and pressing
indeed that Klea desired to tell him in such a place and at such an
hour. Or was she like a thousand other women--was he now on the way to
a lover's meeting with her, who only a few days before had responded to
his glance and accepted his violets?

This thought flashed once through his mind with importunate
distinctness, but he dismissed it as absurd and unworthy of himself.
A king would be more likely to offer to share his throne with a beggar
than this girl would be to invite him to enjoy the sweet follies of
love-making with her in a secret spot.

Of course she wanted above all things to acquire some certainty as to
her sister's fate, perhaps too to speak to him of her parents; still,
she would hardly have made up her mind to invite him if she had not
learned to trust him, and this confidence filled him with pride, and at
the same time with an eager longing to see her, which seemed to storm
his heart with more violence with every minute that passed.

While the mule sought and found its way in the deep darkness with slow
and sure steps, he gazed up at the firmament, at the play of the clouds
which now covered the moon with their black masses, and now parted,
floating off in white sheeny billows while the silver crescent of the
moon showed between them like a swan against the dark mirror of a lake.

And all the time he thought incessantly of Klea--thinking in a dreamy
way that he saw her before him, but different and taller than before,
her form growing more and more before his eyes till at last it was so
tall that her head touched the sky, the clouds seemed to be her veil,
and the moon a brilliant diadem in her abundant dark hair. Powerfully
stirred by this vision he let the bridle fall on the mule's neck, and
spread open his arms to the beautiful phantom, but as he rode forwards
it ever retired, and when presently the west wind blew the sand in his
face, and he had to cover his eyes with his hand it vanished entirely,
and did not return before he found himself at the Apis-tombs.

He had hoped to find here a soldier or a watchman to whom he could
entrust the beast, but when the midnight chant of the priests of the
temple of Osiris-Apis had died away not a sound was to be heard far or
near; all that lay around him was as still and as motionless as though
all that had ever lived there were dead. Or had some demon robbed him
of his hearing? He could hear the rush of his own swift pulses in his
ears-not the faintest sound besides.

Such silence is there nowhere but in the city of the dead and at night,
nowhere but in the desert.

He tied the mule's bridle to a stela of granite covered with
inscriptions, and went forward to the appointed place. Midnight must be
past--that he saw by the position of the moon, and he was beginning to
ask himself whether he should remain standing where he was or go on to
meet the water-bearer when he heard first a light footstep, and then saw
a tall erect figure wrapped in a long mantle advancing straight towards
him along the avenue of sphinxes. Was it a man or a woman--was it she
whom he expected? and if it were she, was there ever a woman who had
come to meet a lover at an assignation with so measured, nay so solemn,
a step? Now he recognized her face--was it the pale moonlight that made
it look so bloodless and marble-white? There was something rigid in her
features, and yet they had never--not even when she blushingly accepted
his violets--looked to him so faultlessly beautiful, so regular and so
nobly cut, so dignified, nay impressive.

For fully a minute the two stood face to face, speechless and yet quite
near to each other. Then Publius broke the silence, uttering with the
warmest feeling and yet with anxiety in his deep, pure voice, only one
single word; and the word was her name "Klea."

The music of this single word stirred the girl's heart like a message
and blessing from heaven, like the sweetest harmony of the siren's song,
like the word of acquittal from a judge's lips when the verdict is life
or death, and her lips were already parted to say 'Publius' in a tone
no less deep and heartfelt-but, with all the force of her soul, she
restrained herself, and said softly and quickly:

"You are here at a late hour, and it is well that you have come."

"You sent for me," replied the Roman.

"It was another that did that, not I," replied Klea in a slow dull tone,
as if she were lifting a heavy weight, and could hardly draw her breath.
"Now--follow me, for this is not the place to explain everything in."

With these words Klea went towards the locked door of the Apis-tombs,
and tried, as she stood in front of it, to insert into the lock the
key that Krates had given her; but the lock was still so new, and her
fingers shook so much, that she could not immediately succeed. Publius
meanwhile was standing close by her side, and as he tried to help her
his fingers touched hers.

And when he--certainly not by mistake--laid his strong and yet trembling
hand on hers, she let it stay for a moment, for she felt as if a tide of
warm mist rose up in her bosom dimming her perceptions, and paralyzing
her will and blurring her sight.

"Klea," he repeated, and he tried to take her left hand in his own;
but she, like a person suddenly aroused to consciousness after a short
dream, immediately withdrew the hand on which his was resting, put the
key into the lock, opened the door, and exclaimed in a voice of almost
stern command, "Go in first."

Publius obeyed and entered the spacious antechamber of the venerable
cave, hewn out of the rock and now dimly lighted. A curved passage of
which he could not see the end lay before him, and on both sides, to
the right and left of him, opened out the chambers in which stood the
sarcophagi of the deceased sacred bulls. Over each of the enormous stone
coffins a lamp burnt day and night, and wherever a vault stood open
their glimmer fell across the deep gloom of the cave, throwing a bright
beam of light on the dusky path that led into the heart of the rock,
like a carpet woven of rays of light.

What place was this that Klea had chosen to speak with him in.

But though her voice sounded firm, she herself was not cool and
insensible as Orcus--which this place, which was filled with the fumes
of incense and weighed upon his senses, much resembled--for he had felt
her fingers tremble under his, and when he went up to her, to help her,
her heart beat no less violently and rapidly than his own. Ah! the man
who should succeed in touching that heart of hard, but pure and precious
crystal would indeed enjoy a glorious draught of the most perfect bliss.

"This is our destination," said Klea; and then she went on in short
broken sentences. "Remain where you are. Leave me this place near the
door. Now, answer me first one question. My sister Irene has vanished
from the temple. Did you cause her to be carried off?"

"I did," replied Publius eagerly. "She desired me to greet you from her,
and to tell you how much she likes her new friends. When I shall have
told you--"

"Not now," interrupted Klea excitedly. "Turn round--there where you see
the lamp-light." Publius did as he was desired, and a slight shudder
shook even his bold heart, for the girl's sayings and doings seemed
to him not solemn merely, but mysterious like those of a prophetess.
A violent crash sounded through the silent and sacred place, and loud
echoes were tossed from side to side, ringing ominously throughout the
grotto. Publius turned anxiously round, and his eye, seeking Klea, found
her no more; then, hurrying to the door of the cave, he heard her lock
it on the outside.

The water-bearer had escaped him, had flung the heavy door to, and
imprisoned him; and this idea was to the Roman so degrading and
unendurable that, lost to every feeling but rage, wounded pride, and
the wild desire to be free, he kicked the door with all his might, and
called out angrily to Klea:

"Open this door--I command you. Let me free this moment or, by all the
gods--"

He did not finish his threat, for in the middle of the right-hand panel
of the door a small wicket was opened through which the priests were
wont to puff incense into the tomb of the sacred bulls--and twice,
thrice, finally, when he still would not be pacified, a fourth time,
Klea called out to him:

"Listen to me--listen to me, Publius." Publius ceased storming, and she
went on:

"Do not threaten me, for you will certainly repent it when you have
heard what I have to tell you. Do not interrupt me; I may tell you at
once this door is opened every day before sunrise, so your imprisonment
will not last long; and you must submit to it, for I shut you in to save
your life--yes, your life which was in danger. Do you think my anxiety
was folly? No, Publius, it is only too well founded, and if you, as a
man, are strong and bold, so am I as a woman. I never was afraid of an
imaginary nothing. Judge yourself whether I was not right to be afraid
for you.

"King Euergetes and Eulaeus have bribed two hideous monsters to murder
you. When I went to seek out Irene I overheard all, and I have seen with
my own eyes the two horrible wolves who are lurking to fall upon you,
and heard with these ears their scheme for doing it. I never wrote the
note on the tile which was signed with my name; Eulaeus did it, and you
took his bait and came out into the desert by night. In a few minutes
the ruffians will have stolen up to this place to seek their victim, but
they will not find you, Publius, for I have saved you--I, Klea, whom you
first met with smiles--whose sister you have stolen away--the same Klea
that you a minute since were ready to threaten. Now, at once, I am going
into the desert, dressed like a traveller in a coat and hat, so that in
the doubtful light of the moon I may easily be taken for you--going to
give my weary heart as a prey to the assassins' knife."

"You are mad!" cried Publius, and he flung himself with his whole weight
on the door, and kicked it with all his strength. "What you purpose is
pure madness open the door, I command you! However strong the villains
may be that Euergetes has bribed, I am man enough to defend myself."

"You are unarmed, Publius, and they have cords and daggers."

"Then open the door, and stay here with me till day dawns. It is not
noble, it is wicked to cast away your life. Open the door at once, I
entreat you, I command you!"

At any other time the words would not have failed of their effect on
Klea's reasonable nature, but the fearful storm of feeling which had
broken over her during the last few hours had borne away in its whirl
all her composure and self-command. The one idea, the one resolution,
the one desire, which wholly possessed her was to close the life
that had been so full of self-sacrifice by the greatest sacrifice
of all--that of life itself, and not only in order to secure Irene's
happiness and to save the Roman, but because it pleased her--her
father's daughter--to make a noble end; because she, the maiden, would
fain show Publius what a woman might be capable of who loved him above
all others; because, at this moment, death did not seem a misfortune;
and her mind, overwrought by hours of terrific tension, could not free
itself from the fixed idea that she would and must sacrifice herself.

She no longer thought these things--she was possessed by them; they had
the mastery, and as a madman feels forced to repeat the same words again
and again to himself, so no prayer, no argument at this moment would
have prevailed to divert her from her purpose of giving up her young
life for Publius and Irene. She contemplated this resolve with affection
and pride as justifying her in looking up to herself as to some nobler
creature. She turned a deaf ear to the Roman's entreaty, and said in a
tone of which the softness surprised him:

"Be silent Publius, and hear me further. You too are noble, and
certainly you owe me some gratitude for having saved your life."

"I owe you much, and I will pay it," cried Publius, "as long as there is
breath in this body--but open the door, I beseech you, I implore you--"

"Hear me to the end, time presses; hear me out, Publius. My sister Irene
went away with you. I need say nothing about her beauty, but how bright,
how sweet her nature is you do not know, you cannot know, but you will
find out. She, you must be told, is as poor as I am, but the child of
freeborn and noble parents. Now swear to me, swear--no, do not interrupt
me--swear by the head of your father that you will never, abandon her,
that you will never behave to her otherwise than as if she were the
daughter of your dearest friend or of your own brother."

"I swear it and I will keep my oath--by the life of the man whose head
is more sacred to me than the names of all the gods. But now I beseech
you, I command you open this door, Klea--that I may not lose you--that I
may tell you that my whole heart is yours, and yours alone--that I love
you, love you unboundedly."

"I have your oath," cried the girl in great excitement, for she could
now see a shadow moving backwards and forwards at some distance in the
desert. "You have sworn by the head of your father. Never let Irene
repent having gone with you, and love her always as you fancy now, in
this moment, that you love me, your preserver. Remember both of you the
hapless Klea who would gladly have lived for you, but who now gladly
dies for you. Do not forget me, Publius, for I have never but this once
opened my heart to love, but I have loved you Publius, with pain and
torment, and with sweet delight--as no other woman ever yet revelled in
the ecstasy of love or was consumed in its torments." She almost shouted
the last words at the Roman as if she were chanting a hymn of triumph,
beside herself, forgetting everything and as if intoxicated.

Why was he now silent, why had he nothing to answer, since she had
confessed to him the deepest secret of her breast, and allowed him to
look into the inmost sanctuary of her heart? A rush of burning words
from his lips would have driven her off at once to the desert and to
death; his silence held her back--it puzzled her and dropped like cool
rain on the soaring flames of her pride, fell on the raging turmoil of
her soul like oil on troubled water. She could not part from him thus,
and her lips parted to call him once more by his name.

While she had been making confession of her love to the Roman as if
it were her last will and testament, Publius felt like a man dying
of thirst, who has been led to a flowing well only to be forbidden
to moisten his lips with the limpid fluid. His soul was filled with
passionate rage approaching to despair, and as with rolling eyes he
glanced round his prison an iron crow-bar leaning against the wall met
his gaze; it had been used by the workmen to lift the sarcophagus of the
last deceased Apis into its right place. He seized upon this tool, as a
drowning man flings himself on a floating plank: still he heard Klea's
last words, and did not lose one of them, though the sweat poured from
his brow as he inserted the metal lever like a wedge between the two
halves of the door, just above the threshold.

All was now silent outside; perhaps the distracted girl was already
hurrying towards the assassins--and the door was fearfully heavy and
would not open nor yield. But he must force it--he flung himself on the
earth and thrust his shoulder under the lever, pushing his whole
body against the iron bar, so that it seemed to him that every joint
threatened to give way and every sinew to crack; the door rose--once
more he put forth the whole strength of his manly vigor, and now the
seam in the wood cracked, the door flew open, and Klea, seized with
terror, flew off and away--into the desert--straight towards the
murderers.

Publius leaped to his feet and flung himself out of his prison; as he
saw Klea escape he flew after her with, hasty leaps, and caught her in
a few steps, for her mantle hindered her in running, and when she would
not obey his desire that she should stand still he stood in front of her
and said, not tenderly but sternly and decidedly:

"You do not go a step farther, I forbid it."

"I am going where I must go," cried the girl in great agitation. "Let me
go, at once!"

"You will stay here--here with me," snarled Publius, and taking both
her hands by the wrists he clasped them with his iron fingers as with
handcuffs. "I am the man and you are the woman, and I will teach you who
is to give orders here and who is to obey."

Anger and rage prompted these quite unpremeditated words, and as
Klea--while he spoke them with quivering lips--had attempted with the
exertion of all her strength, which was by no means contemptible, to
wrench her hands from his grasp, he forced her--angry as he still was,
but nevertheless with due regard for her womanliness--forced her by a
gentle and yet irresistible pressure on her arms to bend before him, and
compelled her slowly to sink down on both knees.

As soon as she was in this position, Publius let her free; she covered
her eyes with her aching hands and sobbed aloud, partly from anger, and
because she felt herself bitterly humiliated.

"Now, stand up," said Publius in an altered tone as he heard her
weeping. "Is it then such a hard matter to submit to the will of a man
who will not and cannot let you go, and whom you love, besides?" How
gentle and kind the words sounded! Klea, when she heard them, raised her
eyes to Publius, and as she saw him looking down on her as a supplicant
her anger melted and turned to grateful emotion--she went closer to him
on her knees, laid her head against him and said:

"I have always been obliged to rely upon myself, and to guide another
person with loving counsel, but it must be sweeter far to be led by
affection and I will always, always obey you."

"I will thank you with heart and soul henceforth from this hour!" cried
Publius, lifting her up. "You were ready to sacrifice your life for
me, and now mine belongs to you. I am yours and you are mine--I your
husband, you my wife till our life's end!"

He laid his hands on her shoulders, and turned her face round to his;
she resisted no longer, for it was sweet to her to yield her will to
that of this strong man. And how happy was she, who from her childhood
had taken it upon herself to be always strong, and self-reliant, to feel
herself the weaker, and to be permitted to trust in a stronger arm than
her own. Somewhat thus a young rose-tree might feel, which for the first
time receives the support of the prop to which it is tied by the careful
gardener.

Her eyes rested blissfully and yet anxiously on his, and his lips had
just touched hers in a first kiss when they started apart in terror, for
Klea's name was clearly shouted through the still night-air, and in the
next instant a loud scream rang out close to them followed by dull cries
of pain.

"The murderers!" shrieked Klea, and trembling for herself and for
him she clung closely to her lover's breast. In one brief moment the
self-reliant heroine--proud in her death-defying valor--had become a
weak, submissive, dependent woman.

CHAPTER XXII.

On the roof of the tower of the pylon by the gate of the Serapeum stood
an astrologer who had mounted to this, the highest part of the temple,
to observe the stars; but it seemed that he was not destined on this
occasion to fulfil his task, for swiftly driving black clouds swept
again and again across that portion of the heavens to which his
observations were principally directed. At last he impatiently laid
aside his instruments, his waxed tablet and style, and desired the
gate-keeper--the father of poor little Philo--whose duty it was to
attend at night on the astrologers on the tower, to carry down all his
paraphernalia, as the heavens were not this evening favorable to his
labors.

"Favorable!" exclaimed the gate-keeper, catching up the astrologer's
words, and shrugging his shoulders so high that his head disappeared
between them.

"It is a night of horror, and some great disaster threatens us for
certain. Fifteen years have I been in my place, and I never saw such a
night but once before, and the very next day the soldiers of Antiochus,
the Syrian king, came and plundered our treasury. Aye--and to-night is
worse even than that was; when the dog-star first rose a horrible shape
with a lion's mane flew across the desert, but it was not till midnight
that the fearful uproar began, and even you shuddered when it broke out
in the Apis-cave. Frightful things must be coming on us when the sacred
bulls rise from the dead and butt and storm at the door with their
horns to break it open. Many a time have I seen the souls of the dead
fluttering and wheeling and screaming above the old mausoleums, and
rock-tombs of ancient times. Sometimes they would soar up in the air in
the form of hawks with men's heads, or like ibises with a slow lagging
flight, and sometimes sweep over the desert like gray shapeless shadows,
or glide across the sand like snakes; or they would creep out of the
tombs, howling like hungry dogs. I have often heard them barking like
jackals or laughing like hyenas when they scent carrion, but to-night
is the first time I ever heard them shrieking like furious men, and then
groaning and wailing as if they were plunged in the lake of fire and
suffering horrible torments.

"Look there--out there--something is moving again! Oh! holy father,
exorcise them with some mighty bann. Do you not see how they are growing
larger? They are twice the size of ordinary mortals." The astronomer
took an amulet in his hand, muttered a few sentences to himself,
seeking at the same time to discover the figures which had so scared the
gate-keeper.

"They are indeed tall," he said when he perceived them. "And now they
are melting into one, and growing smaller and smaller--however,
perhaps they are only men come to rob the tombs, and who happen to be
particularly tall, for these figures are not of supernatural height."

"They are twice as tall as you, and you are not short," cried the
gate-keeper, pressing his lips devoutly to the amulet the astrologer
held in his hand, "and if they are robbers why has no watchman called
out to stop them? How is it their screams and groans have not waked the
sentinels that are posted there every night? There--that was another
fearful cry! Did you ever hear such tones from any human breast? Great
Serapis, I shall die of fright! Come down with me, holy father, that I
may look after my little sick boy, for those who have seen such sights
do not escape unstricken."

The peaceful silence of the Necropolis had indeed been disturbed, but
the spirits of the departed had no share in the horrors which had been
transacted this night in the desert, among the monuments and rocktombs.
They were living men that had disturbed the calm of the sacred place,
that had conspired with darkness in cold-blooded cruelty, greater than
that of evil spirits, to achieve the destruction of a fellow-man; but
they were living men too who, in the midst of the horrors of a most
fearful night, had experienced the blossoming in their own souls of the
divinest germ which heaven implants in the bosom of its mortal children.
Thus in a day of battle amid blood and slaughter may a child be born
that shall grow up blessed and blessing, the comfort and joy of his
family.

The lion-maned monster whose appearance and rapid disappearance in
the desert had first alarmed the gate-keeper, had been met by several
travellers on its way to Memphis, and each and all, horrified by its
uncanny aspect, had taken to flight or tried to hide themselves--and
yet it was no more than a man with warm pulses, an honest purpose, and
a true and loving heart. But those who met him could not see into his
soul, and his external aspect certainly bore little resemblance to that
of other men.

His feet, unused to walking, moved but clumsily, and had a heavy body
to carry, and his enormous beard and the mass of gray hair on his
head--which he turned now this way and now that--gave him an aspect that
might well scare even a bold man who should meet him unexpectedly. Two
stall-keepers who, by day, were accustomed to offer their wares for sale
near the Serapeum to the pilgrims, met him close to the city.

"Did you see that panting object?" said one to the other as they looked
after him. "If he were not shut up fast in his cell I could declare it
was Serapion, the recluse."

"Nonsense," replied the other. "He is tied faster by his oath than by
chains and fetters. It must be one of the Syrian beggars that besiege
the temple of Astarte."

"Perhaps," answered his companion with indifference. "Let us get on now,
my wife has a roast goose for supper this evening."

Serapion, it is true, was fast tied to his cell, and yet the pedler
had judged rightly, for he it was who hurried along the high-road
frightening all he met. After his long captivity walking was very
painful to him; besides, he was barefoot, and every stone in the
path hurt the soles of his feet which had grown soft; nevertheless he
contrived to make a by no means contemptible pace when in the distance
he caught sight of a woman's figure which he could fancy to be Klea.
Many a man, who in his own particular sphere of life can cut a very
respectable figure, becomes a laughing-stock for children when he is
taken out of his own narrow circle, and thrown into the turmoil of
the world with all his peculiarities clinging to him. So it was with
Serapion; in the suburbs the street-boys ran after him mocking at him,
but it was not till three smart hussys, who were resting from their
dance in front of a tavern, laughed loudly as they caught sight of him,
and an insolent soldier drove the point of his lance through his flowing
mane, as if by accident, that he became fully conscious of his wild
appearance, and it struck him forcibly that he could never in this guise
find admission to the king's palace.

With prompt determination he turned into the first barber's stall that
he saw lighted up; at his appearance the barber hastily retreated behind
his counter, but he got his hair and beard cut, and then, for the first
time for many years, he saw his own face in the mirror that the barber
held before him. He nodded, with a melancholy smile, at the face--so
much aged--that looked at him from the bright surface, paid what was
asked, and did not heed the compassionate glance which the barber and
his assistant sent after him. They both thought they had been exercising
their skill on a lunatic, for he had made no answer to all their
questions, and had said nothing but once in a deep and fearfully loud
voice:

"Chatter to other people--I am in a hurry."

In truth his spirit was in no mood for idle gossip; no, it was full of
gnawing anxiety and tender fears, and his heart bled when he reflected
that he had broken his vows, and forsworn the oath he had made to his
dying mother.

When he reached the palace-gate he begged one of the civic guard to
conduct him to his brother, and as he backed his request with a gift
of money he was led at once to the man whom he sought. Glaucus was
excessively startled to recognize Serapion, but he was so much
engaged that he could only give up a few minutes to his brother, whose
proceedings he considered as both inexplicable and criminal.

Irene, as the anchorite now learned, had been carried off from the
temple, not by Euergetes but by the Roman, and Klea had quitted the
palace only a few minutes since in a chariot and would return about
midnight and on foot from the second tavern to the temple. And the poor
child was so utterly alone, and her way lay through the desert where she
might be attacked by dissolute soldiery or tomb-robbers or jackals and
hyenas. Her walk was to begin from the second tavern, and that was the
very spot where low rioters were wont to assemble--and his darling was
so young, so fair, and so defenceless!

He was once more a prey to the same unendurable dread that had come over
him, in his cell, after Klea had left the temple and darkness had closed
in. At that moment he had felt all that a father could feel who from his
prison-window sees his beloved and defenceless child snatched away by
some beast of prey. All the perils that could threaten her in the palace
or in the city, swarming with drunken soldiers, had risen before his
mind with fearful vividness, and his powerful imagination had painted in
glaring colors all the dangers to which his favorite--the daughter of a
noble and respected man--might be exposed.

He rushed up and down his cell like a wounded tiger, he flung himself
against the walls, and then, with his body hanging far out of the
window, had looked out to see if the girl--who could not possibly have
returned yet--were not come back again. The darker it grew, the more his
anguish rose, and the more hideous were the pictures that stood before
his fancy; and when, presently, a pilgrim in the Pastophorium who had
fallen into convulsions screamed out loud, he was no longer master of
himself--he kicked open the door which, locked on the outside and rotten
from age, had been closed for years, hastily concealed about him some
silver coins he kept in his chest, and let himself down to the ground.

There he stood, between his cell and the outer wall of the temple, and
now it was that he remembered his vows, and the oath he had sworn,
and his former flight from his retreat. Then he had fled because the
pleasures and joys of life had tempted him forth--then he had sinned
indeed; but now the love, the anxious care that urged him to quit his
prison were the same as had brought him back to it. It was to keep faith
that he now broke faith, and mighty Serapis could read his heart, and
his mother was dead, and while she lived she had always been ready and
willing to forgive.

He fancied so vividly that he could see her kind old face looking at him
that he nodded at her as if indeed she stood before him.

Then, he rolled an empty barrel to the foot of the wall, and with some
difficulty mounted on it. The sweat poured down him as he climbed up the
wall built of loose unbaked bricks to the parapet, which was much more
than a man's height; then, sliding and tumbling, he found himself in the
ditch which ran round it on the outside, scrambled up its outer slope,
and set out at last on his walk to Memphis.

What he had afterwards learned in the palace concerning Klea had but
little relieved his anxiety on her account; she must have reached the
border of the desert so much sooner than he, and quick walking was so
difficult to him, and hurt the soles of his feet so cruelly! Perhaps
he might be able to procure a staff, but there was just as much bustle
outside the gate of the citadel as by day. He looked round him, feeling
the while in his wallet, which was well filled with silver, and his eye
fell on a row of asses whose drivers were crowding round the soldiers
and servants that streamed out of the great gate.

He sought out the strongest of the beasts with an experienced eye, flung
a piece of silver to the owner, mounted the ass, which panted under its
load, and promised the driver two drachmm in addition if he would take
him as quickly as possible to the second tavern on the road to the
Serapeum. Thus--he belaboring the sides of the unhappy donkey with
his sturdy bare legs, while the driver, running after him snorting
and shouting, from time to time poked him up from behind with a
stick--Serapion, now going at a short trot, and now at a brisk gallop,
reached his destination only half an hour later than Klea.

In the tavern all was dark and empty, but the recluse desired no
refreshment. Only his wish that he had a staff revived in his mind, and
he soon contrived to possess himself of one, by pulling a stake out
of the fence that surrounded the innkeeper's little garden. This was
a somewhat heavy walking-stick, but it eased the recluse's steps, for
though his hot and aching feet carried him but painfully the strength of
his arms was considerable.

The quick ride had diverted his mind, had even amused him, for he was
easily pleased, and had recalled to him his youthful travels; but now,
as he walked on alone in the desert, his thoughts reverted to Klea, and
to her only.

He looked round for her keenly and eagerly as soon as the moon came out
from behind the clouds, called her name from time to time, and thus got
as far as the avenue of sphinxes which connected the Greek and Egyptian
temples; a thumping noise fell upon his ear from the cave of the
Apis-tombs. Perhaps they were at work in there, preparing for the
approaching festival. But why were the soldiers, which were always on
guard here, absent from their posts to-night? Could it be that they had
observed Klea, and carried her off?

On the farther side of the rows of sphinxes too, which he had now
reached, there was not a man to be seen--not a watchman even though the
white limestone of the tombstones and the yellow desert-sand shone as
clear in the moonlight as if they had some internal light of their own.

At every instant he grew more and more uneasy, he climbed to the top of
a sand-hill to obtain a wider view, and loudly called Klea's name.

There--was he deceived? No--there was a figure visible near one of the
ancient tomb-shrines--a form that seemed wrapped in a long robe, and
when once more he raised his voice in a loud call it came nearer to him
and to the row of sphinxes. In great haste and as fast as he could he
got down again to the roadway, hurried across the smooth pavement, on
both sides of which the long perspective of man-headed lions kept guard,
and painfully clambered up a sand-heap on the opposite side. This was in
truth a painful effort, for the sand crumbled away again and again under
his feet, slipping down hill and carrying him with it, thus compelling
him to find a new hold with hand and foot. At last he was standing on
the outer border of the sphinx-avenue and opposite the very shrine where
he fancied he had seen her whom he sought; but during his clamber it had
become perfectly dark again, for a heavy cloud had once more veiled the
moon. He put both hands to his mouth, and shouted as loud as he could,
"Klea!"--and then again, "Klea!"

Then, close at his feet he heard a rustle in the sand, and saw a figure
moving before him as though it had risen out of the ground. This could
not be Klea, it was a man--still, perhaps, he might have seen his
darling--but before he had time to address him he felt the shock of
a heavy blow that fell with tremendous force on his back between his
shoulders. The assassin's sand-bag had missed the exact spot on the nape
of the neck, and Serapion's strongly-knit backbone would have been able
to resist even a stronger blow.

The conviction that he was attacked by robbers flashed on his
consciousness as immediately as the sense of pain, and with it the
certainty that he was a lost man if he did not defend himself stoutly.

Behind him he heard another rustle in the sand. As quickly as he could
he turned round with an exclamation of "Accursed brood of vipers!" and
with his heavy staff he fell upon the figure before him like a smith
beating cold iron, for his eye, now more accustomed to the darkness,
plainly saw it to be a man. Serapion must have hit straight, for his foe
fell at his feet with a hideous roar, rolled over and over in the sand,
groaning and panting, and then with one shrill shriek lay silent and
motionless.

The recluse, in spite of the dim light, could see all the movements
of the robber he had punished so severely, and he was bending over the
fallen man anxiously and compassionately when he shuddered to feel two
clammy hands touching his feet, and immediately after two sharp pricks
in his right heel, which were so acutely painful that he screamed aloud,
and was obliged to lift up the wounded foot. At the same time, however,
he did not overlook the need to defend himself. Roaring like a wounded
bull, cursing and raging, he laid about him on all sides with his staff,
but hit nothing but the ground. Then as his blows followed each other
more slowly, and at last his wearied arms could no longer wield the
heavy stake, and he found himself compelled to sink on his knees, a
hoarse voice addressed him thus:

"You have taken my comrade's life, Roman, and a two-legged serpent has
stung you for it. In a quarter of an hour it will be all over with you,
as it is with that fellow there. Why does a fine gentleman like you go
to keep an appointment in the desert without boots or sandals, and so
make our work so easy? King Euergetes and your friend Eulaeus send you
their greetings. You owe it to them that I leave you even your ready
money; I wish I could only carry away that dead lump there!"

During this rough speech Serapion was lying on the ground in great
agony; he could only clench his fists, and groan out heavy curses with
his lips which were now getting parched. His sight was as yet undimmed,
and he could distinctly see by the light of the moon, which now shone
forth from a broad cloudless opening in the sky, that the murderer
attempted to carry away his fallen comrade, and then, after raising his
head to listen for a moment sprang off with flying steps away into the
desert. But the recluse now lost consciousness, and when some minutes
later he once more opened his eyes his head was resting softly in the
lap of a young girl, and it was the voice of his beloved Klea that asked
him tenderly.

"You poor dear father! How came you here in the desert, and into the
hands of these murderers? Do you know me--your Klea? And he who is
looking for your wounds--which are not visible at all--he is the Roman
Publius Scipio. Now first tell us where the dagger hit you that I may
bind it up quickly--I am half a physician, and understand these things
as you know."

The recluse tried to turn his head towards Klea's, but the effort was in
vain, and he said in a low voice: "Prop me up against the slanting wall
of the tomb shrine yonder; and you, child, sit down opposite to me, for
I would fain look at you while I die. Gently, gently, my friend Publius,
for I feel as if all my limbs were made of Phoenician glass, and might
break at the least touch. Thank you, my young friend--you have strong
arms, and you may lift me a little higher yet. So--now I can bear it;
nay, I am well content, I am to be envied--for the moon shows me your
dear face, my child, and I see tears on your cheeks, tears for me, a
surly old man. Aye, it is good, it is very good to die thus."

"Oh, father, father!" cried Klea. "You must not speak so. You must live,
you must not die; for see, Publius here asks me to be his wife, and the
Immortals only can know how glad I am to go with him, and Irene is
to stay with us, and be my sister and his. That must make you happy,
father.--But tell us, pray tell us where the wound hurts that the
murderer gave you?"

"Children, children," murmured the anchorite, and a happy smile parted
his lips. "The gracious gods are merciful in permitting me to see
that--aye, merciful to me, and to effect that end I would have died
twenty deaths."

Klea pressed his now cold hand to her lips as he spoke and again asked,
though hardly able to control her voice for tears:

"But the wound, father--where is the wound?" "Let be, let be," replied
Serapion. "It is acrid poison, not a dagger or dart that has undone
my strength. And I can depart in peace, for I am no longer needed for
anything. You, Publius, must now take my place with this child, and will
do it better than I. Klea, the wife of Publius Scipio! I indeed have
dreamt that such a thing might come to pass, and I always knew, and have
said to myself a thousand times that I now say to you my son: This girl
here, this Klea is of a good sort, and worthy only of the noblest.
I give her to you, my son Publius, and now join your hands before me
here--for I have always been like a father to her."

"That you have indeed," sobbed Klea. "And it was no doubt for my sake,
and to protect me, that you quitted your retreat, and have met your
death."

"It was fate, it was fate," stammered the old man.

"The assassins were in ambush for me," cried Publius, seizing Serapion's
hand, "the murderers who fell on you instead of me. Once more, where is
your wound?"

"My destiny fulfils itself," replied the recluse. "No locked-up cell, no
physician, no healing herb can avail against the degrees of Fate. I am
dying of a serpent's sting as it was foretold at my birth; and if I had
not gone out to seek Klea a serpent would have slipped into my cage, and
have ended my life there. Give me your hands, my children, for a deadly
chill is creeping over me, and its cold hand already touches my heart."

For a few minutes his voice failed him, and then he said softly:

"One thing I would fain ask of you. My little possessions, which were
intended for you and Irene, you will now use to bury me. I do not wish
to be burnt, as they did with my father--no, I should wish to be finely
embalmed, and my mummy to be placed with my mother's. If indeed we may
meet again after death--and I believe we shall--I would rather see her
once more than any one, for she loved me so much--and I feel now as if
I were a child again, and could throw my arms round her neck. In another
life, perhaps, I may not be the child of misfortune that I have been
in this--in another life--now it grips my heart--in another----Children
whatever joys have smiled on me in this, children, it was to you I have
owed it--Klea, to you--and there is my little Irene too----"

These were the last words of Serapion the recluse; he fell back with a
deep sigh and was dead. Klea and Publius tenderly closed his faithful
eyes.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The unwonted tumult that had broken the stillness of the night had not
been unobserved in the Greek Serapeum any more than in the Egyptian
temple adjoining the Apis-tombs; but perfect silence once more reigned
in the Necropolis, when at last the great gate of the sanctuary of
Osiris-Apis was thrown open, and a little troop of priests arranged in a
procession came out from it with a vanguard of temple servants, who had
been armed with sacrificial knives and axes.

Publius and Klea, who were keeping faithful watch by the body of their
dead friend, saw them approaching, and the Roman said:

"It would have been even less right in such a night as this to let you
proceed to one of the temples with out my escort than to have let our
poor friend remain unwatched."

"Once more I assure you," said Klea eagerly "that we should have thrown
away every chance of fulfilling Serapion's last wish as he intended, if
during our absence a jackal or a hyena had mutilated his body, and I
am happy to be able at least to prove to my friend, now he is dead, how
grateful I am for all the kindness he showed us while he lived. We ought
to be grateful even to the departed, for how still and blissful has
this hour been while guarding his body. Storm and strife brought us
together--"

"And here," interrupted Publius, "we have concluded a happy and
permanent treaty of peace for the rest of our lives."

"I accept it willingly," replied Klea, looking down, "for I am the
vanquished party."

"But you have already confessed," said Publius, "that you were never so
unhappy as when you thought you had asserted your strength against
mine, and I can tell you that you never seemed to me so great and yet so
lovable as when in the midst of your triumph, you gave up the battle for
lost. Such an hour as that, a man experiences but once in his lifetime.
I have a good memory, but if ever I should forget it, and be angry and
passionate--as is sometimes my way--remind me of this spot, or of this
our dead friend, and my hard mood will melt, and I shall remember that
you once were ready to give your life for mine. I will make it easy for
you, for in honor of this man, who sacrificed his life for yours and who
was actually murdered in my stead, I promise to add his name of Serapion
to my own, and I will confirm this vow in Rome. He has behaved to us as
a father, and it behoves me to reverence his memory as though I had been
his son. An obligation was always unendurable to me, and how I shall
ever make full restitution to you for what you have done for me this
night I do not yet know--and yet I should be ready and willing every
day and every hour to accept from you some new gift of love. 'A debtor,'
says the proverb, 'is half a prisoner,' and so I must entreat you to
deal mercifully with your conquerer."

He took her hand, stroked back the hair from her forehead, and touched
it lightly with his lips. Then he went on:

"Come with me now that we may commit the dead into the hands of these
priests."

Klea once more bent over the remains of the anchorite, she hung the
amulet he had given her for her journey round his neck, and then
silently obeyed her lover. When they came up with the little procession
Publius informed the chief priest how he had found Serapion, and
requested him to fetch away the corpse, and to cause it to be prepared
for interment in the costliest manner in the embalming house attached
to their temple. Some of the temple-servants took their places to keep
watch over the body, and after many questions addressed to Publius, and
after examining too the body of the assassin who had been slain, the
priests returned to the temple.

As soon as the two lovers were left alone again Klea seized the Roman's
hand, and said passionately: "You have spoken many tender words to me,
and I thank you for them; but I am wont always to be honest, and less
than any one could I deceive you. Whatever your love bestows upon me
will always be a free gift, since you owe me nothing at all and I owe
you infinitely much; for I know now that you have snatched my sister
from the clutches of the mightiest in the land while I, when I heard
that Irene had gone away with you, and that murder threatened your life,
believed implicitly that on the contrary you had lured the child away
to become your sweetheart, and then--then I hated you, and then--I must
confess it\--in my horrible distraction I wished you dead!"

"And you think that wish can offend me or hurt me?" said Publius. "No,
my child; it only proves to me that you love me as I could wish to be
loved. Such rage under such circumstances is but the dark shadow cast by
love, and is as inseparable from love as from any tangible body. Where
it is absent there is no such thing as real love present--only an airy
vision, a phantom, a mockery. Such an one as Klea does not love nor hate
by halves; but there are mysterious workings in your soul as in that of
every other woman. How did the wish that you could see me dead turn into
the fearful resolve to let yourself be killed in my stead?"

"I saw the murderers," answered Klea, "and I was overwhelmed with horror
of them and of their schemes, and of all that had to do with them; I
would not destroy Irene's happiness, and I loved you even more deeply
than I hated you; and then--but let us not speak of it."

"Nay-tell me all."

"Then there was a moment--"

"Well, Klea?"

"Then--in these last hours, while we have been sitting hand in hand by
the body of poor Serapion, and hardly speaking, I have felt it all over
again--then the midnight hymn of the priests fell upon my heart, and as
I lifted up my soul in prayer at their pious chant I felt as if all my
inmost heart had been frozen and hardened, and was reviving again to new
life and tenderness and warmth. I could not help thinking of all that
is good and right, and I made up my mind to sacrifice myself for you and
for Irene's happiness far more quickly and easily than I could give it
up afterwards. My father was one of the followers of Zeno--"

"And you," interrupted Publius, "thought you were acting in accordance
with the doctrine of the Stoa. I also am familiar with it, but I do not
know the man who is so virtuous and wise that he can live and act, as
that teaching prescribes, in the heat of the struggle of life, or who
is the living representative in flesh and blood of the whole code of
ethics, not sinning against one of its laws and embodying it in himself.
Did you ever hear of the peace of mind, the lofty indifference and
equanimity of the Stoic sages? You look as if the question offended you,
but you did not by any means know how to attain that magnanimity, for
I have seen you fail in it; indeed it is contrary to the very nature of
woman, and--the gods be thanked--you are not a Stoic in woman's dress,
but a woman--a true woman, as you should be. You have learned nothing
from Zeno and Chrysippus but what any peasant girl might learn from an
honest father, to be true I mean and to love virtue. Be content with
that; I am more than satisfied."

"Oh, Publius," exclaimed the girl, grasping her friend's hand. "I
understand you, and I know that you are right. A woman must be miserable
so long as she fancies herself strong, and imagines and feels that she
needs no other support than her own firm will and determination, no
other counsel than some wise doctrines which she accepts and adheres to.
Before I could call you mine, and went on my own way, proud of my own
virtue, I was--I cannot bear to think of it--but half a soul, and took
it for a whole; but now--if now fate were to snatch you from me, I
should still know where to seek the support on which I might lean in
need and despair. Not in the Stoa, not in herself can a woman find such
a stay, but in pious dependence on the help of the gods."

"I am a man," interrupted Publius, "and yet I sacrifice to them and
yield ready obedience to their decrees."

"But," cried Klea, "I saw yesterday in the temple of Serapis the meanest
things done by his ministers, and it pained me and disgusted me, and I
lost my hold on the divinity; but the extremest anguish and deepest love
have led me to find it again. I can no longer conceive of the power
that upholds the universe as without love nor of the love that makes men
happy as other than divine. Any one who has once prayed for a being they
love as I prayed for you in the desert can never again forget how to
pray. Such prayers indeed are not in vain. Even if no god can hear them
there is a strengthening virtue in such prayer itself.

"Now I will go contentedly back to our temple till you fetch me, for I
know that the discreetest, wisest, and kindest Beings will watch over
our love."

"You will not accompany me to Apollodorus and Irene?" asked Publius in
surprise.

"No," answered Klea firmly. "Rather take me back to the Serapeum. I have
not yet been released from the duties I undertook there, and it will be
more worthy of us both that Asclepiodorus should give you the daughter
of Philotas as your wife than that you should be married to a runaway
serving-maid of Serapis."

Publius considered for a moment, and then he said eagerly:

"Still I would rather you should come with me. You must be dreadfully
tired, but I could take you on my mule to Apollodorus. I care little for
what men say of me when I am sure I am doing right, and I shall know how
to protect you against Euergetes whether you wish to be readmitted to
the temple or accompany me to the sculptor. But do come--it will be hard
on me to part from you again. The victor does not lay aside the crown
when he has just won it in hard fight."

"Still I entreat you to take me back to the Serapeum," said Klea, laying
her hand in that of Publius.

"Is the way to Memphis too long, are you utterly tired out?"

"I am much wearied by agitation and terror, by anxiety and happiness,
still I could very well bear the ride; but I beg of you to take me back
to the temple."

"What--although you feel strong enough to remain with me, and in spite
of my desire to conduct you at once to Apollodorus and Irene?" asked
Publius astonished, and he withdrew his hand. "The mule is waiting out
there. Lean on my arm. Come and do as I request you."

"No, Publius, no. You are my lord and master, and I will always obey you
unresistingly. In one thing only let me have my own way, now and in the
future. As to what becomes a woman I know better than you, it is a thing
that none but a woman can decide."

Publius made no reply to these words, but he kissed her, and threw his
arm round her; and so, clasped in each other's embrace, they reached the
gate of the Serapeum, there to part for a few hours.

Klea was let into the temple, and as soon as she had learned that little
Philo was much better, she threw herself on her humble bed.

How lonely her room seemed, how intolerably empty without Irene. In
obedience to a hasty impulse she quitted her own bed, lay herself down
on her sister's, as if that brought her nearer to the absent girl, and
closed her eyes; but she was too much excited and too much exhausted to
sleep soundly. Swiftly-changing visions broke in again and again on her
sincerely devotional thoughts and her restless half-sleep, painting to
her fancy now wondrously bright images, and now most horrible ones--now
pictures of exquisite happiness, and again others of dismal melancholy.
And all the time she imagined she heard distant music and was being
rocked up and down by unseen hands.

Still the image of the Roman overpowered all the rest.

At last a refreshing sleep sealed her eyes more closely, and in her
dream she saw her lover's house in Rolne, his stately father, his noble
mother--who seemed to her to bear a likeness to her own mother--and the
figures of a number of tall and dignified senators. She felt herself
much embarrassed among all these strangers, who looked enquiringly at
her, and then kindly held out their hands to her. Even the dignified
matron came to meet her with effusion, and clasped her to her breast;
but just as Publius had opened his to her and she flew to his heart,
and she fancied she could feel his lips pressed to hers, the woman, who
called her every morning, knocked at her door and awoke her.

This time she had been happy in her dream and would willingly have slept
again; but she forced herself to rise from her bed, and before the sun
was quite risen she was standing by the Well of the Sun and, not to
neglect her duty, she filled both the jars for the altar of the god.

Tired and half-overcome by sleep, she set the golden vessels in their
place, and sat down to rest at the foot of a pillar, while a priest
poured out the water she had brought, as a drink-offering on the ground.

It was now broad daylight as she looked out into the forecourt through
the many-pillared hall of the temple; the early sunlight played round
the columns, and its slanting rays, at this hour, fell through the tall
doorway far into the great hall which usually lay in twilight gloom.

The sacred spot looked very solemn in her eyes, sublime, and as it were
reconsecrated, and obeying an irresistible impulse she leaned against a
column, and lifting up her arms, and raising her eyes, she uttered her
thankfulness to the god for his loving kindness, and found but one thing
to pray for, namely that he would preserve Publius and Irene, and all
mankind, from sorrow and anxiety and deception.

She felt as if her heart had till now been benighted and dark, and had
just disclosed some latent light--as if it had been withered and dry,
and was now blossoming in fresh verdure and brightly-colored flowers.

To act virtuously is granted even to those who, relying on themselves.
earnestly strive to lead moral, just and honest lives; but the happy
union of virtue and pure inner happiness is solemnized only in the heart
which is able to seek and find a God--be it Serapis or Jehovah.

At the door of the forecourt Klea was met by Asclepiodorus, who desired
her to follow him. The high-priest had learned that she had secretly
quitted the temple: when she was alone with him in a quiet room he
asked her gravely and severely, why she had broken the laws and left
the sanctuary without his permission. Klea told him, that terror for
her sister had driven her to Memphis, and that she there had heard that
Publics Cornelius Scipio, the Roman who had taken up her father's cause,
had saved Irene from king Euergetes, and placed her in safety, and that
then she had set out on her way home in the middle of the night.

The high-priest seemed pleased at her news, and when she proceeded to
inform him that Serapion had forsaken his cell out of anxiety for her,
and had met his death in the desert, he said:

"I knew all that, my child. May the gods forgive the recluse, and may
Serapis show him mercy in the other world in spite of his broken oath!
His destiny had to be fulfilled. You, child, were born under happier
stars than he, and it is within my power to let you go unpunished. This
I do willingly; and Klea, if my daughter Andromeda grows up, I can only
wish that she may resemble you; this is the highest praise that a father
can bestow on another man's daughter. As head of this temple I command
you to fill your jars to-day, as usual, till one who is worthy of you
comes to me, and asks you for his wife. I suspect he will not be long to
wait for."

"How do you know, father,--" asked Klea, coloring.

"I can read it in your eyes," said Asclepiodorus, and he gazed kindly
after her as, at a sign from him, she quitted the room.

As soon as he was alone he sent for his secretary and said:

"King Philometor has commanded that his brother Euergetes' birthday
shall be kept to-day in Memphis. Let all the standards be hoisted, and
the garlands of flowers which will presently arrive from Arsinoe be
fastened up on the pylons; have the animals brought in for sacrifice,
and arrange a procession for the afternoon. All the dwellers in the
temple must be carefully attired. But there is another thing; Komanus
has been here, and has promised us great things in Euergetes' name, and
declares that he intends to punish his brother Philometor for having
abducted a girl--Irene--attached to our temple. At the same time he
requests me to send Klea the water-bearer, the sister of the girl who
was carried off, to Memphis to be examined--but this may be deferred.
For to-day we will close the temple gates, solemnize the festival among
ourselves, and allow no one to enter our precincts for sacrifice and
prayer till the fate of the sisters is made certain. If the kings
themselves make their appearance, and want to bring their troops in, we
will receive them respectfully as becomes us, but we will not give up
Klea, but consign her to the holy of holies, which even Euergetes
dare not enter without me; for in giving up the girl we sacrifice our
dignity, and with that ourselves."

The secretary bowed, and then announced that two of the prophets of
Osiris-Apis desired to speak with Asclepiodorus.

Klea had met these men in the antechamber as she quitted the
high-priest, and had seen in the hand of one of them the key with which
she had opened the door of the rock-tomb. She had started, and her
conscience urged her to go at once to the priest-smith, and tell him how
ill she had fulfilled her errand.

When she entered his room Krates was sitting at his work with his feet
wrapped up, and he was rejoiced to see her, for his anxiety for her and
for Irene had disturbed his night's rest, and towards morning his alarm
had been much increased by a frightful dream.

Klea, encouraged by the friendly welcome of the old man, who was usually
so surly, confessed that she had neglected to deliver the key to the
smith in the city, that she had used it to open the Apis-tombs, and had
then forgotten to take it out of the new lock. At this confession the
old man broke out violently, he flung his file, and the iron bolt at
which he was working, on to his work-table, exclaiming:

"And this is the way you executed your commission. It is the first time
I ever trusted a woman, and this is my reward! All this will bring evil
on you and on me, and when it is found out that the sanctuary of Apis
has been desecrated through my fault and yours, they will inflict all
sorts of penance on me, and with very good reason--as for you, they will
punish you with imprisonment and starvation."

"And yet, father," Klea calmly replied, "I feel perfectly guiltless,
and perhaps in the same fearful situation you might not have acted
differently."

"You think so--you dare to believe such a thing?" stormed the old man.
"And if the key and perhaps even the lock have been stolen, and if I
have done all that beautiful and elaborate work in vain?"

"What thief would venture into the sacred tombs?" asked Klea doubtfully.

"What! are they so unapproachable?" interrupted Krates. "Why, a
miserable creature like you even dared to open them. But only wait--only
wait; if only my feet were not so painful--"

"Listen to me," said the girl, going closer up to the indignant smith.
"You are discreet, as you proved to me only yesterday; and if I were to
tell you all I went through and endured last night you would certainly
forgive me, that I know."

"If you are not altogether mistaken!" shouted the smith. "Those must be
strange things indeed which could induce me to let such neglect of duty
and such a misdemeanor pass unpunished."

And strange things they were indeed which the old man now had to hear,
for when Klea had ended her narrative of all that had occurred during
the past night, not her eyes only but those of the old smith too were
wet with tears.

"These accursed legs!" he muttered, as his eyes met the enquiring glance
of the young girl, and he wiped the salt dew from his cheeks with the
sleeve of his coat. "Aye-a swelled foot like mine is painful, child, and
a cripple such as I am is not always strong-minded. Old women grow like
men, and old men grow like women. Ah! old age--it is bad to have such
feet as mine, but what is worse is that memory fades as years advance.
I believe now that I left the key myself in the door of the Apis-tombs
last evening, and I will send at once to Asclepiodorus, so that he may
beg the Egyptians up there to forgive me--they are indebted to me for
many small jobs."

CHAPTER XXIV.

All the black masses of clouds which during the night had darkened
the blue sky and hidden the light of the moon had now completely
disappeared. The north-east wind which rose towards morning had floated
them away, and Zeus, devourer of the clouds, had swallowed them up to