uergetes. "Hand me a
mirror here, Diocleides; follow the eyes of her majesty the queen,
and you will be sure to find one. There is the thing! And in fact the
picture it shows me does not displease me. I see there a head on which
besides the two crowns of Egypt a third might well find room, and in
which there is so much brains that they might suffice to fill the skulls
of four kings to the brim. I see two vulture's eyes which are always
keen of sight even when their owner is drunk, and that are in danger
of no peril save from the flesh of these jolly cheeks, which, if they
continue to increase so fast, must presently exclude the light, as the
growth of the wood encloses a piece of money stuck into a rift in a
tree-or as a shutter, when it is pushed to, closes up a window. With
these hands and arms the fellow I see in the mirror there could, at
need, choke a hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be
twice as long as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest. In this mirror
I see a man, who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more
unctuous and solid stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature
there on the bright surface wears a transparent robe, what have you to
say against it, Cleopatra? The Ptolemaic princes must protect the import
trade of Alexandria, that fact was patent even to the great son of
Lagus; and what would become of our commerce with Cos if I did not
purchase the finest bombyx stuffs, since those who sell it make no
profits out of you, the queen--and you cover yourself, like a vestal
virgin, in garments of tapestry. Give me a wreath for my head--aye and
another to that, and new wine in the cup! To the glory of Rome and
to your health, Publius Cornelius Scipio, and to our last critical
conjecture, my Aristarchus--to subtle thinking and deep drinking!"

"To deep thinking and subtle drinking!" retorted the person thus
addressed, while he raised the cup, looked into the wine with his
twinkling eyes and lifted it slowly to his nose--a long, well-formed and
slightly aquiline nose--and to his thin lips.

"Oh! Aristarchus," exclaimed Euergetes, and he frowned. "You please me
better when you clear up the meaning of your poets and historians than
when you criticise the drinking-maxims of a king. Subtle drinking is
mere sipping, and sipping I leave to the bitterns and other birds that
live content among the reeds. Do you understand me? Among reeds, I
say--whether cut for writing, or no."