I will have them set with the most precious stones; even diamonds will seem worthless to me compared with this gift from you.

This has already decided my sentence as to Eulaeus and his unhappy victims before I read your petition.

Still I will read that roll, and read it attentively, for my husband regards Eulaeus as a useful--almost an indispensable-tool, and I must give good reasons for my verdict and for the pardon.

I believe in the innocence of the unfortunate Philotas, but if he had committed a hundred murders, after this present I would procure his freedom all the same." The words vexed the Roman, and they made her who had spoken them in order to please him appear to him at that moment more in the light of a corruptible official than of a queen.

He found the time hang heavy that he spent with Cleopatra, who, in spite of his reserve, gave him to understand with more and more insistence how warmly she felt towards him; but the more she talked and the more she told him, the more silent he became, and he breathed a sigh of relief when her husband at last appeared to fetch him and Cleopatra away to their mid-day meal.
At table Philometor promised to take up the cause of Philotas and his wife, both of whom he had known, and whose fate had much grieved him; still he begged his wife and the Roman not to bring Eulaeus to justice till Euergetes should have left Memphis, for, during his brother's presence, beset as he was with difficulties, he could not spare him; and if he might judge of Publius by himself he cared far more to reinstate the innocent in their rights, and to release them from their miserable lot--a lot of which he had only learned the full horrors quite recently from his tutor Agatharchides--than to drag a wretch before the judges to-morrow or the day after, who was unworthy of his anger, and who at any rate should not escape punishment.
Before the letter from Asclepiodorus--stating the mistaken hypothesis entertained by the priests of Serapis that Irene had been carried off by the king's order--could reach the palace, Publius had found an opportunity of excusing himself and quitting the royal couple.