of Cleopatra, whom she wishes to spare every, annoyance, and perhaps she
dislikes her a little for my sake. Now she wants to inflict on the old
man, Barine's grandfather, whom she loves, some injury which the spoiled,
imprudent woman will scarcely accept quietly, and which will rouse her to
commit some folly that can be used against her. Iras will hardly seek
her life, but she may have in mind exile or something of that kind. She
knows people as well as I know her, my neighbour and playmate, whom many
a time I was obliged to lift down from some tree into which the child had
climbed as nimbly as a kitten."

"I myself suggested this conjecture, yet I cannot credit her with such
unworthy intrigues," cried Gorgias.

"Credit her?" repeated Dion, shrugging his shoulders. "I only transport
myself in imagination to the court and to the soul of the woman who helps
make rain and sunshine there. You have columns rounded and beams hewed
that they may afterwards support the roof to which in due time you wish
to direct attention. She and all who have a voice in the management of
court affairs look first at the roof and then seek anything to raise and
support it, though it should be corpses, ruined lives, and broken hearts.
The point is that the roof shall stand until the architect, the Queen,
sees and approves it. As to the rest--But there is the carriage--It
doubtless brings--You were--"

He paused, laid his hand on his friend's arm, and whispered hastily:
"Iras is undoubtedly at the bottom of this, and it is not Antyllus, but
yonder dreaming lad, for whom she is moving. When she spoke of the
statues just now, she asked in the same breath where I had seen him on
the evening of the day before yesterday, and that was the very time he
called on Barine. The plot was made by her, and Iras is doing all the