As she sailed over the Mediterranean back to Egypt her mind must have been besieged by a hundred schemes and plans for the future. The despair which she had experienced, after the death of the Dictator, at the demolition of all her vast hopes, may now have given place to a spirited desire to begin the fight once more. Cæsar was dead, but his great personality would live again in his little son, whom Antony, she believed, would champion, since in doing so he would further his own ambitions. The legions left at Alexandria by the Dictator would, no doubt, stand by her; and she would bring all the might and all the wealth of Egypt against the power of Octavian. The coming warfare would be waged by her for the creation of that throne for the establishment of which Cæsar had indeed given his life; and her arms would be directed against that form of democratic government which the Dictator, perhaps at her instance, had endeavoured to overthrow, but which a man of Octavian’s character, she supposed, would be contented to support. Her mighty Cæsar would look down from his place amidst the stars to direct her, and to lead their son to the goal of their ambitions; for now he was in very truth a god amongst the gods. Recently during seven days a comet had been seen blazing in the sky, and all men had been convinced that this was the soul of the murdered Dictator rushing headlong to heaven. Even now a strange haze hung over the sun, as though the light of that celestial body were dimmed by the approach of the Divine Cæsar. Before the Queen left Rome she had heard the priests and public officials name him God in very truth; and maybe she had already seen his statues embellished by the star of divinity which was set upon his brow after his death. Surely now he would not desert her, his Queen and his fellow-divinity; nor would he suffer their royal son to pass into obscurity. From his exalted heights he would defend her with his thunderbolts, and come down to her aid upon the wings of the wind. Thus there was no cause for her to despair; and with that wonderful optimism which seems to have characterised her nature, she now set her active brain to thoughts of the future, turning her mature intellect to the duties which lay before her. When Cæsar had met her in Egypt she had been an irresponsible girl. Now she was a keen-brained woman, endowed with the fire and the pluck of her audacious dynasty, and prepared to fight her way with all their unscrupulous energy to the summit of her ambitions. And, moreover, now she held the trump card in her hands in the person of her little boy, who was by all natural laws the rightful heir to the throne of the earth.