the queen's
attention to his own daughter, a maiden of sixteen. But Cleopatra
objected, that she was much taller than herself, and that she would have
to stand by the Hebe, and lay her hand on her arm.

Other maidens were rejected on various grounds, and Euergetes had already
proposed to send off a carrier-pigeon to Alexandria to command that some
fair Greek girl should be sent by an express quadriga to Memphis--where
the dark Egyptian gods and men flourish, and are more numerous than the
fair race of Greeks--when Lysias exclaimed:

"I saw to-day the very girl we want, a Hebe that might have stepped out
from the marble group at my father's, and have been endued with life and
warmth and color by some god. Young, modest, rose and white, and just
about as tall as Your Majesty. If you will allow me, I will not tell you
who she is, till after I have been to our tent to fetch the gems with the
copies of the marble."

"You will find them in an ivory casket at the bottom of my
clothes-chest," said Publius; "here is the key."

"Make haste," cried the queen, "for we are all curious to hear where in
Memphis you discovered your modest, rose and white Hebe."

CHAPTER X.

An hour had slipped by with the royal party, since Lysias had quitted the
company; the wine-cups had been filled and emptied many times; Eulaeus
had rejoined the feasters, and the conversation had taken quite another
turn, since the whole of the company were not now equally interested in
the same subject; on the contrary, the two kings were discussing with
Aristarchus the manuscripts of former poets and of the works of the
sages, scattered throughout Greece, and the ways and means of obtaining
them or of acquiring exact transcripts of them for the library of the
Museum. Hierax was telling Eulaeus of the last Dionysiac festival, and of
the representation of the newest comedy in Alexandria, and Eulaeus
assumed the appearance--not unsuccessfully--of listening with both ears,
interrupting him several times with intelligent questions, bearing
directly on what he had said, while in fact his attention was exclusively
directed to the queen, who had taken entire possession of the Roman
Publius, telling him in a low tone of her life--which was consuming her
strength--of her unsatisfied affections, and her enthusiasm for Rome and
for manly vigor. As she spoke her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled,
for the more exclusively she kept the conversation in her own han