--and whoever is all these
cannot have his peace of mind disturbed, and must be really happy in the
exact meaning of the master. I perceived long since the peril lurking in
this system of instruction, which takes no account of moral excellence;
but at that time it seemed to me also the chief good.

"How all this charmed the mind of the thoughtful child, still untouched
by passion! It was difficult to supply her wonderfully vigorous intellect
with sufficient sustenance, and she really felt that to enrich it was the
highest pleasure. And to her, who could scarcely endure to have a rude
hand touch her, though a small grief or trivial disappointment could not
be averted, the freedom from pain which the master had named as the first
condition for the existence of every pleasure, and termed the chief good,
seemed indeed the first condition of a happy life.

"Yet this child, whom my father once compared to a thinking flower, bore
without complaint her sad destiny--her father's banishment, her mother's
death, her sister Berenike's profligacy. Even to me, in whom she found a
second brother and fully trusted, she spoke of these sorrowful things
only in guarded allusions. I know that she understood what was passing
fully and perfectly, and how deeply she felt it; but pain placed itself
between her and the 'chief good,' and she mastered it. And when she sat
at work, with what tenacious power the delicate creature struggled until
she had conquered the hardest task and outstripped Charmian and even me!

"In those days I understood why, among the gods, a maiden rules over
learning, and why she is armed with the weapons of war. You have heard
how many languages Cleopatra speaks. A remark of Timagenes had fallen
into her soul like a seed. 'With every language you learn,' he had said,
'you will gain a nation.' But there were many peoples in her father's
kingdom, and when she was Queen they must all love her. True, she began
with the tongue of the conquerors, not the conquered. So it happened that
we first learned Lucretius, who reproduces in verse the doctrines of
Epicurus. My father was our teacher, and the second year she read
Lucretius as if it were a Greek book. She had only half known Egyptian;
now she speedily acquired it. During our stay at Philae she found a
troglodyte who was induced to teach her his language. There were Jews
enough here in Alexandria to instruct her in theirs, and she also learned
its kindred tongue, Arabic.