"I hoped we had succeeded in cutting the bowstrings of the Egyptian
winter, and it is but a feeble weapon."

"Still young, still imaginative, still a poet!" said the Empress
wearily. "I saw your wife a couple of hours since. Africa seems to suit
her less well; I was shocked to see Julia, the handsome matron, so
altered. She does not look well."

"Years are the foe of beauty."

"Frequently they are, but true beauty often resists their attacks."

"You are yourself the living proof of your assertion."

"That is as much as to say that I am growing old."

"Nay--only that you know the secret of remaining beautiful."

"You are a poet!" murmured the Empress with a twitch of her thin
under-lip.

"Affairs of state do not favor the Muses."

"But I call any man a poet who sees things more beautiful than they are,
or who gives them finer names than they deserve--a poet, a dreamer, a
flatterer--for it comes to that."

"Ah! modesty can always find words to repel even well-merited
admiration."