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Updated: May 8, 2025
Of a truth, I cannot guess where she has found the means to gather in this store of splendour, as a husbandman gathers his golden harvest." But I, knowing whence the wealth came, groaned in bitterness of spirit, and made no answer. "Goest thou also, Charmion?" I asked presently. "Ay, I and all the Court. Thou, too thou goest." "I go? Nay, why is this?"
Then Charmion rose also and took her hands from her face, for she, too, had been stricken with dread. "How dost thou these things, royal Harmachis?" she said. "Tell me; for of a truth I fear thee." "Be not afraid," I answered. "Perchance thou didst see nothing but what was in my mind. All things are shadows. How canst thou, then, know their nature, or what is and what only seems to be?
There I found her in the Alabaster Hall, royally clad, a wild light in her eyes, and, with her, Iras and Charmion, and before her guards; and stretched here and there upon the marble, bodies of dead men, among whom lay one yet dying. "Greeting, thou Olympus!" she cried. "Here is a sight to glad a physician's heart men dead and men sick unto death!" "What doest thou, O Queen?" I said affrighted.
How long I stood so I know not, but when next I lifted up my eyes they fell upon the form of Charmion, whom, indeed, I had altogether forgotten. And though at the moment I thought but little of it, I noted vaguely that she was flushed as though with anger, and beat her foot upon the floor. "Oh, it is thou, Charmion!" I said. "What ails thee?
But I was chiefly angered against Charmion, because she laughed the loudest, and I did not then know that laughter and bitterness are often the veils with which a sore heart wraps its weakness from the world. "An omen" she said it was that crown of flowers and so it proved indeed.
Be not so deadly calm! Curse me, and slay!" "What was it that thou didst say to me just now, Charmion that as I had sown so I must reap? It is not lawful that thou shouldst slay thyself; it is not lawful that I, thine equal in sin, should slay thee because through thee I sinned. As thou hast sown, Charmion, so must thou also reap.
Charmion entered silently, and I followed her into a dark chamber. Being in, she barred the door and, kindling tinder to a flame, lit a hanging lamp. As the light grew strong I gazed around. The chamber was not large, and had but one casement, closely shuttered.
She turned whiter yet white as the dead and a look grew upon her face that checked my foolish mirth. "Thou findest, then, Harmachis," she said in a low, choked voice, and dropping the level of her eyes, "thou findest cause of merriment in what I have said?" "Nay," I answered; "nay, Charmion; forgive me if I laughed. It was rather a laugh of despair; for what am I to say to thee?
The intent was that, if Antony were defeated and the city taken by Cæsar, the conqueror should not take the Queen alive, neither should he have her treasure. With her two women, Iras and Charmion, she entered the tomb, all agreeing that when the worst came they would fire the flax and die together. When the Queen heard that Antony was at death's door she ordered that he should be brought to her.
And Charmion, rising, stood before her, looking at her through the long lashes of her downcast eyes. "Lady, thou canst die," she said quietly. "Ay, of a truth I had forgotten; I can die. Olympus, hast thou the drug?" "Nay; but if the Queen wills it, by to-morrow morn it shall be brewed a drug so swift and strong that not the Gods themselves can hold him who drinks it back from sleep."
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