aye and closer, even closer, as I may well
say--this time I will do it, even at the risk of Cleopatra's plunging us
into ruin, my husband and me, as she has done to so many who have dared
to contravene her will."

The wet-nurse wept aloud, but Zoe laid her hand on the distressed
woman's shoulder, and said soothingly: "I know you have more to submit
to from Cleopatra's humors than any of us all, but do not be overhasty.
Tomorrow she will send you a handsome present, as she so often has done
after being unkind; and though she vexes and hurts you again and again,
she will try to make up for it again and again till, when this year is
over, your attendance on the prince will be at an end, and you can go
home again to your own family. We all have to practise patience; we
live like people dwelling in a ruinous house with to-day a stone and
to-morrow a beam threatening to fall upon our heads. If we each take
calmly whatever befalls us our masters try to heal our wounds, but if
we resist may the gods have mercy on us! for Cleopatra is like a strung
bow, which sets the arrow flying as soon as a child, a mouse, a breath
of air even touches it--like an over-full cup which brims over if a
leaf, another drop, a single tear falls into it. We should, any one of
us, soon be worn out by such a life, but she needs excitement, turmoil
and amusement at every hour. She comes home late from a feast, spends
barely six hours in disturbed slumber, and has hardly rested so long as
it takes a pebble to fall to the ground from a crane's claw before we
have to dress her again for another meal. From the council-board she
goes to hear some learned discourse, from her books in the temple to
sacrifice and prayer, from the sanctuary to the workshops of artists,
from pictures and statues to the audience-chamber, from a reception
of her subjects and of foreigners to her writing-room, from answering
letters to a procession and worship once more, from the sacred services
back again to her dressing-tent, and there, while she is being attired
she listens to me while I read the most profound works--and how she
listens! not a word escapes her, and her memory retains whole sentences.
Amid all this hurry and scurry her spirit must need be like a limb that
is sore from violent exertion, and that is painfully tender to every
rough touch. We are to her neither more nor less than the wretched flies
which we hit at when they trouble us, and may the gods be merciful to