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 tha