"Let your lady accompany me," begged Eulaeus, "and prefer your request to
Asclepiodorus. While I am speaking with the high-priest, Zoe can at any
rate win over the girl, and whatever we do must be done to-morrow, or the
Roman will be beforehand with us. I know that he has cast an eye on
Irene, who is in fact most lovely. He gives her flowers, feeds his pet
bird with pheasants and peaches and other sweetmeats, lets himself be
lured into the Serapeum by his lady-love as often as possible, stays
there whole hours, and piously follows the processions, in order to
present the violets with which you graciously honored him by giving them
to his fair one--who no doubt would rather wear royal flowers than any
others--"

"Liar!" cried the queen, interrupting the courtier in such violent
excitement and such ungoverned rage, so completely beside herself, that
her husband drew back startled.

"You are a slanderer! a base calumniator! The Roman attacks you with
naked weapons, but you slink in the dark, like a scorpion, and try to
sting your enemy in the heel. Apelles, the painter, warns us--the
grandchildren of Lagus--against folks of your kidney in the picture he
painted against Antiphilus; as I look at you I am reminded of his Demon
of Calumny. The same spite and malice gleam in your eyes as in hers, and
the same fury and greed for some victim, fire your flushed face! How you
would rejoice if the youth whom Apelles has represented Calumny as
clutching by the hair, could but be Publius! and if only the lean and
hollow-eyed form of Envy, and the loathsome female figures of Cunning and
Treachery would come to your did as they have to hers! But I remember
too the steadfast and truthful glance of the boy she has flung to the
ground, his arms thrown up to heaven, appealing for protection to the
goddess and the king--and though Publius Scipio is man enough to guard