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Cleopatra seems to me, for all her Oriental dress, and although she wears a black wig, to be meant for Medea da Carpi; she is kneeling, baring her breast for the victor to strike, but in reality to captivate him, and he turns away with an awkward gesture of loathing.
Some say that, the jewel cast away so majestically was one of a pair which Cleopatra wore as ear-rings, and that when Antony restrained his hostess from a repetition of the draught, she presented the now matchless pearl to him.
Cleopatra could now see them all at a single glance, and the picture was indeed one of exquisite charm; for on these beautiful couches slept the twins, the ten-year-old children of Cleopatra and Antony Antonius Helios and Cleopatra Selene. The girl was pink and white, fair and wonderfully lovely; the boy no less beautiful, but with ebon-black hair, like his father.
"And yesternight, Cleopatra, thou didst swear that thou wouldst wed me, and call me to thy side before the face of Egypt!" "And yesternight, Harmachis, the red ring round the moon marked the coming of the storm, and yet the day is fair! But who knows that the tempest may not break to-morrow? Who knows that I have not chosen the easier path to save Egypt from the Roman?
Following the odd custom which the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies had inherited from their Egyptian predecessors, she was betrothed to her own brother. He, however, was a mere child of less than twelve, and was under the control of evil counselors, who, in his name, gained control of the capital and drove Cleopatra into exile.
Antony gave him his life, and on this account he remained true and faithful to him to the last. But when also the officer who commanded for him in Africa, to whose care he had committed all his forces there, took them over to Caesar, he resolved to kill himself, but was hindered by his friends. And coming to Alexandria, he found Cleopatra busied in a most bold and wonderful enterprise.
Ferrero has aptly likened it to Paris not so much the Paris of to-day as the Paris of forty years ago, when the Second Empire flourished in all its splendor as the home of joy and strange delights. Over the country of which Alexandria was the capital Cleopatra came to reign at seventeen.
It was while celebrating the marriage of his daughter by Olympias, with Alexander, king of Epirus, and also the birth of a son by Cleopatra, that Pausanias, one of the royal body-guard, who nourished an implacable hatred of Philip, chose his opportunity, and stabbed him with a short sword he had concealed under his garment.
Boiling with excitement, when I met Cleopatra later in the ballroom, I told her what was going on above, in the moonlight, on the roof. "At last your niece knows what I think you have guessed all along, but so wisely kept to yourself," I said. "About Fenton, I mean. It's all right between those two now. They will come downstairs engaged." "Everybody is engaged!" Cleopatra stormily retorted.
There may be no Helen such as she who lived at Troy, and no Cleopatra such as Egypt's dusky queen, but there are grand women living yet, worthy of heroes' love." "I am sure of it," he said, "now that I have seen you." But she made no reply; she did not even appear to have heard his words. "I can understand you," she said, gently.
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