"When, many years later, she visited Antony at Tarsus, the warriors
imagined that some piece of Egyptian magic was at work, for she addressed
each commander in his own tongue, and talked with him as if she were a
native of the same country.

"It was the same with everything. She outstripped us in every branch of
study. To her burning ambition it would have been unbearable to lag
behind.

"The Roman Lucretius became her favourite poet, although she was no more
friendly to his nation than I, but the self-conscious power of the foe
pleased her, and once I heard her exclaim 'Ah! if the Egyptians were
Romans, I would give up our garden for Berenike's throne.'

"Lucretius constantly led her back to Epicurus, and awakened a severe
conflict in her unresting mind. You probably know that he teaches that
life in itself is not so great a blessing that it must be deemed a
misfortune not to live. It is only spoiled by having death appear to us
as the greatest of misfortunes. Only the soul which ceases to regard
death as a misfortune finds peace. Whoever knows that thought and feeling
end with life will not fear death; for, no matter how many dear and
precious things the dead have left here below, their yearning for them
has ceased with life. He declares that providing for the body is the
greatest folly, while the Egyptian religion, in which Anubis strove to
strengthen her faith, maintained precisely the opposite.

"To a certain degree he succeeded, for his personality exerted a powerful
influence over her; and besides, she naturally took great pleasure in
mystical, supernatural things, as my brother Straton did in physical
strength, and you, Barine, enjoy the gift of song. You know Anubis by
sight. What Alexandrian has not seen this remarkable man? and whoever has
once met his eyes does not easily forget him. He does indeed rule over
mysterious powers, and he used them in his intercourse with the young
princess. It is his work if she cleaves to the religious belief of her
people, if she who is a Hellene to the last drop of blood loves Egypt,
and is ready to make any sacrifice for her independence and grandeur. She
is called 'the new Isis,' but Isis presides over the magic arts of the
Egyptians, and Anubis initiated Cleopatra into this secret science, and
even persuaded her to enter the observatory and the laboratory--

"But all these things had their origin in our garden of Epicurus, and my
father did not venture to forbid it;