and the features of most expressed joyful emotion. The news of the
victory had reached their ears, and they wanted to offer sacrifices to
the goddess whom Cleopatra, "the new Isis," preferred to all others.

The first court-yard of the sanctuary was astir with life. They could
hear the ringing of the sistrum bells and the murmuring chant of the
priests. The quiet fore-court of the little temple of the goddess, which
here, in the Greek quarter of palaces, had as few visitors as the great
Temple of Isis in the Rhakotis was overcrowded, had now become the worst
possible rendezvous for men who stood so near the rulers of the
government. The remark made about the Queen the evening before by
Antyllus, Antony's nineteen-year-old son, at the house of Barine, a
beautiful young woman who attracted all the prominent men in Alexandria,
was the more imprudent because it coincided with the opinion of all the
wisest heads. The reckless youth enthusiastically reverenced his father,
but Cleopatra, the object of Antony's love, and--in the Egyptians' eyes--
his wife, was not Antyllus's mother. He was the son of Fulvia, his
father's first wife, and feeling himself a Roman, would have preferred a
thousand times to live on the banks of the Tiber. Besides, it was
certain--Antony's stanchest friends made no attempt to conceal the fact--
that the Queen's presence with the army exerted a disturbing influence,
and could not fail to curb the daring courage of the brave general.
Antyllus, with the reckless frankness inherited from his father, had
expressed this view in the presence of all Barine's guests, and in a form
which would be only too quickly spread throughout Alexandria, whose
inhabitants relished such speeches.

These remarks would be slow in reaching the plain people who were
attracted to the temple by the news of the victory, yet many doubtless
knew Caesarion, whom the architect was awaiting here. It would be wiser