ith it, he felt himself called upon also to give her
some pleasure, though in truth but a very small one. Thus speaking he
produced the gems, and she showed as much delight over this little work
of art as if, instead of being a rich queen and possessed of the finest
engraved gems in the world, she were some poor girl receiving her first
gift of some long-desired gold ornament.

"Exquisite, splendid!" she cried again and again. "And besides, they
are an imperishable memorial of you, dear friend, and of your visit to
Egypt. I will have them set with the most precious stones; even diamonds
will seem worthless to me compared with this gift from you. This has
already decided my sentence as to Eulaeus and his unhappy victims
before I read your petition. Still I will read that roll, and read
it attentively, for my husband regards Eulaeus as a useful--almost an
indispensable-tool, and I must give good reasons for my verdict and for
the pardon. I believe in the innocence of the unfortunate Philotas,
but if he had committed a hundred murders, after this present I would
procure his freedom all the same."

The words vexed the Roman, and they made her who had spoken them in
order to please him appear to him at that moment more in the light of a
corruptible official than of a queen. He found the time hang heavy
that he spent with Cleopatra, who, in spite of his reserve, gave him
to understand with more and more insistence how warmly she felt towards
him; but the more she talked and the more she told him, the more silent
he became, and he breathed a sigh of relief when her husband at last
appeared to fetch him and Cleopatra away to their mid-day meal.

At table Philometor promised to take up the cause of Philotas and his
wife, both of whom he had known, and whose fate had much grieved him;
still he begged his wife and the Roman not to bring Eulaeus to justice
till Euergetes should have left Memphis, for, during his brother's
presence, beset as he was with difficulties, he could not spare him; and
if he might judge of Publius by himself he cared far more to reinstate
the innocent in their rights, and to release them from their miserable
lot--a lot of which he had only learned the full horrors quite recently
from his tutor Agatharchides--than to drag a wretch before the judges
to-morrow or the day after, who was unworthy of his anger, and who at
any rate should not escape punishment.

Before the letter from Asclepiodorus--stating the