The news of the victory had reached their ears, and they wanted to offer sacrifices to the goddess whom Cleopatra, "the new Isis," preferred to all others.
The first court-yard of the sanctuary was astir with life.

They could hear the ringing of the sistrum bells and the murmuring chant of the priests.

The quiet fore-court of the little temple of the goddess, which here, in the Greek quarter of palaces, had as few visitors as the great Temple of Isis in the Rhakotis was overcrowded, had now become the worst possible rendezvous for men who stood so near the rulers of the government.

The remark made about the Queen the evening before by Antyllus, Antony's nineteen-year-old son, at the house of Barine, a beautiful young woman who attracted all the prominent men in Alexandria, was the more imprudent because it coincided with the opinion of all the wisest heads.

The reckless youth enthusiastically reverenced his father, but Cleopatra, the object of Antony's love, and--in the Egyptians' eyes--his wife, was not Antyllus's mother.