"But are you so sure that it was love which made him follow me?
I am of a different opinion.

True love does not paralyze, but doubles the high qualities of man.

I learned this when Caesar was prisoned by a greatly superior force within this very palace, his ships burned, his supply of water cut off.
In him also, in Antony, I was permitted to witness this magnificent spectacle twenty--what do I say ?-a hundred times, so long as he loved me with all the ardour of his fiery soul.

But what happened at Actium?
That shameful flight of the cooing dove after his mate, at which generations yet unborn will point in mockery! He who does not see more deeply will attribute to the foolish madness of love this wretched forgetfulness of duty, honour, fame, the present and the future; but I, Iras--and this is the thought which whitens one hair after another, which will speedily destroy the remnant of your mistress's former beauty by the exhaustion of sleepless nights--I know better.

It was not love which drew Antony after me, not love that trampled in the dust the radiant image of reckless courage, not love that constrained the demigod to follow the pitiful track of a fugitive woman." Here her voice fell, and seizing the girl's wrist with a painful pressure, she drew her closer to her side and whispered: "The goblet of Nektanebus is connected with it.