These as yet undefined ambitions and hopes found a very real and material expression in Cæsar’s eagerness to know whether the expected babe would be a girl, or a son and heir; and it seems likely that his determination to remain in Egypt was largely due to his unwillingness to depart before that question was answered. This, and the paternal responsibility which perhaps for the first time in his sordid life he had ever felt, led him to postpone his return to Rome. He seems to have entertained feelings of the greatest tenderness towards the Queen, whom he was beginning to regard as his wife; and he was, no doubt, anxious to be near her during the ordeal through which the young and delicately-built girl had, for the first time, to pass. It has been the custom for historians to attribute Cæsar’s prolonged residence in Egypt, after the termination of the war and the settlement of Egyptian affairs, to the sensuous allurements of Cleopatra, who is supposed to have held him captive by the arts of love and by the voluptuous attractions of her person; but here a natural fact of life has been overlooked. A woman who is about to render to mankind the great service of her sex, has neither the ability nor the desire to arouse the feverish emotions of her lover. Her condition calls forth from him the more gentle aspects of his affection. His responsibility is expressed in consideration, in interest, in sympathy, and in a kind of gratitude; but it is palpably absurd to suppose that a mere passion, such as that by which Cæsar is thought to have been animated, could at this time have influenced his actions. If love of any kind held him in Egypt, it was the love of a husband for his wife, the devotion of a man who was about to become a parent to the woman who would presently pay toll to Nature in response to his incitement. Actually, as we have seen, there was something more than love to keep him in Egypt; there was ambition, headlong aspiration, the intoxication of a conqueror turning his mind to new conquests, and the supreme interest of a would-be king constructing a throne which should be occupied not only by himself but by the descendants of his own flesh and blood for all time.[40]