the world, and Jerusalem is no more. As for the temple that Herod
built----"

"Herod!" she said. "I know not Herod. But go on."

"The Romans burnt it, and the Roman eagles flew across its ruins, and
now Judæa is a desert."

"So, so! They were a great people, those Romans, and went straight to
their end--ay, they sped to it like Fate, or like their own eagles on
their prey!--and left peace behind them."

"Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant," I suggested.

"Ah, thou canst speak the Latin tongue, too!" she said, in surprise. "It
hath a strange ring in my ears after all these days, and it seems to
me that thy accent does not fall as the Romans put it. Who was it wrote
that? I know not the saying, but it is a true one of that great people.
It seems that I have found a learned man--one whose hands have held the
water of the world's knowledge. Knowest thou Greek also?"

"Yes, oh Queen, and something of Hebrew, but not to speak them well.
They are all dead languages now."

She clapped her hands in childish glee. "Of a truth, ugly tree that thou
art, thou growest the fruits of wisdom, oh Holly," she said; "but of
those Jews whom I hated, for they called me 'heathen' when I would have
taught them my philosophy--did their Messiah come, and doth He rule the
world?"