they will not be permitted to have the least effect upon the mind of the
Queen, nor upon any of her advisers. She is now in reality an independent
sovereign, reigning over an immense empire, stretching from Egypt to the
shores of the Euxine, from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and she
still stands upon the records of the senate as a colleague--even as when
Odenatus shared the throne with her--of the Emperor. This is a great and a
fortunate position. The gods forbid that any intemperance on the part of
the Palmyrenes should rouse the anger or the jealousy of the fierce
Aurelian!'

Could I have said less than this? But I saw in the countenances of both,
while I was speaking, especially in the honest, expressive one of Fausta,
that they could brook no hint of inferiority or of dependence on the part
of their country; so deep a place has the great Zenobia secured for
herself in the pride and most sacred affections of this people.

'I will not, with you, Piso,' said Gracchus, 'believe that the Emperor
will do aught to break up the present harmony. I will have faith in him;
and I shall use all the influence that I may possess in the affairs of the
state to infuse a spirit of moderation into our acts, and above all into
our language; for one hasty word uttered in certain quarters may lead to
the ruin of kingdoms that have taken centuries to attain their growth. But
this I say: let there only come over here from the West the faintest
whisper of any purpose on the part of Aurelian to consider Zenobia as
holding the same position in regard to Rome as Tetricus in Gaul, and that
moment a flame is kindled throughout Palmyra that nothing but blood can
quench. This people, as you well know, has been a free people from the
earliest records of history, and they will sink under the ruins of their
capital and their country, ere they will bend to a foreign power.'