'You have delivered yourself, Caius Petronius,' replied the Queen, in a calm and firm voice, 'as it became a Roman to do, with plainness, and as I must believe, without reserve. So far I honor you. Now hear me, and as you hear, so report to him who sent you. Tell Aurelian that what I am, I have made myself; that the empire which hails me Queen has been moulded into what it is by Odenatus and Zenobia; it is no gift, but an inheritance--a conquest and a possession; it is held, not by favor, but by right of birth and power; and that when he will give away possessions or provinces which he claims as his or Rome's, for the asking, I will give away Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. Tell him that as I have lived a queen, so, the gods helping, I will die a queen,--that the last moment of my reign and my life shall be the same. If he is ambitious, let him be told that I am ambitious too--ambitious of wider and yet wider empire--of an unsullied fame, and of my people's love. Tell him I do not speak of gratitude on the part of Rome, but that posterity will say, that the Power which stood between Rome and Persia, and saved the empire in the East, which avenged the death of Valerian, and twice pursued the king of kings as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, deserved some fairer acknowledgment than the message you now bring, at the hands of a Roman emperor.'
'Let the Queen,' quickly rejoined Petronius, but evidently moved by what he had heard, 'let the Queen fully take me. Aurelian purposes not to invade the fair region where I now am, and where my eyes are rejoiced by this goodly show of city, plain and country. He hails you Queen of Palmyra! He does but ask again those appendages of your greatness, which have been torn from Rome, and were once members of her body.'
'Your emperor is gracious indeed!' replied the Queen, smiling; 'if he may hew off my limbs, he will spare the trunk!--and what were the trunk without the limbs?'
'And is this,' said Petronius, his voice significant of inward grief, 'that which I must carry back to Rome? Is there no hope of a better adjustment?'
'Will not the Queen of Palmyra delay for a few days her final answer?' added Varro: 'I see, happily, in her train, a noble Roman, from whom, as well as from us, she may obtain all needed knowledge of both the character and purposes of Aurelian. We are at liberty to wait her pleasure.'
'You have our thanks, Romans, for your courtesy, and we accept your offer; although in what I have said, I think I have spoken the sense of my people.'
'You have indeed, great Queen,' interrupted Zabdas with energy.
'Yet I owe it to my trusty counsellor, the great Longinus,' continued the Queen, 'and who now thinks not with me, to look farther into the reasons--which, because they are his, must be strong ones---by which he supports an opposite judgment.'
'Those reasons have now,' said the Greek, 'lost much or all of their force,'--Zabdas smiled triumphantly--'yet still I would advocate delay.'
'Let it be so then,' said the Queen; 'and in the meanwhile, let the ambassadors of Aurelian not refuse the hospitalities of the Eastern Queen. Our palace is yours, while it shall please you to remain.'