The judges, marvelling at the correctness of these replies, awarded the prize to the youthful Euphrosine. Thereupon the most venerable among them, having risen, presented her with the golden cup, and encircled her forehead with a garland of papyrus by way of honouring the keen intelligence she had displayed. Then the virgin was conducted home to her father’s house to the sound of flutes amidst a great concourse of people. But as she was a Christian and pious in no ordinary degree, far from being puffed up with these honours, she recognized their emptiness, and resolved that in the future she would apply the keenness of her intelligence to the solution of problems more worthy of attention—as, for example, the computation of the sum of the numbers represented by the letters of the name of Jesus, and the consideration of the wonderful properties of these numbers. Meanwhile she grew in wisdom and in beauty, and was sought in marriage by very many young men. Amongst these was the Count Longinus, who possessed great wealth. Romulus received this suitor favourably, hoping that an alliance with this powerful man might assist him in the rehabilitation of his own affairs, which had got into disorder through his vast expenditure upon his palace, his plate, and his gardens. Romulus, who was one of the most lavish amongst the inhabitants of Alexandria, had above all squandered considerable sums in gathering together in his mansion, beneath a vast cupola, the most wonderful examples of mechanism, such as a globe as brilliant as a sapphire, bearing on it the heavenly constellations set out with exactitude in precious stones. There were also to be seen in this chamber a fountain, constructed by Hero, which distributed perfumed waters, and two mirrors so cunningly contrived that they converted the gazer, the one into a person of extreme height and slenderness, and the other into a person equally short and stout. But the most marvellous sight in this mansion was a hawthorn bush all covered with birds, which by ingenious mechanism both sang and fluttered their wings as if they had been alive. Romulus had expended the remains of his wealth in the acquisition of these mechanical toys, which fascinated him. This, then, was the reason for his favourable reception of the Count Longinus, the possessor of great wealth. He urged forward by all means in his power the consummation of a marriage from which he anticipated both happiness for his daughter and relief from anxiety in his old age. But each time that he recounted to Euphrosine the claims of Count Longinus, she turned her glance aside without making any reply. One day he said to her— “Will you not admit, my daughter, that he is the handsomest, the wealthiest, and the noblest citizen in all Alexandria?” Euphrosine replied discreetly—