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Here you shall make acquaintance with the shade of Cleopatra, that "Thing of Flame," whose passion-breathing beauty shaped the destiny of Empires. Here you shall read how the soul of Charmion was slain of the sword her vengeance smithied. Here Harmachis, the doomed Egyptian, being about to die, salutes you who follow on the path he trod.
Be firm and prosper, royal Harmachis!" and bending forward she took my hand and kissed it. Then, with one strange last look, she turned and led the way down the stair and through the empty halls. In the chamber that is called the Alabaster Hall, the roof of which is upborne by columns of black marble, we stayed.
I thought she would have said Charmion, but she named her not. "And many others oh, I know them all!" "Ay!" I said, "what of them?" "Hear now, Harmachis," she answered, rising and placing her hand upon my arm, "for thy sake I will show mercy to them. I will do no more than must be done.
He blessed me, saying that he would gladly give his life, ay, and a hundred lives, if they were his, if he might but live to see Egypt once more a nation, and me, Harmachis, the descendant of its royal and ancient blood, seated on the throne. For he was a patriot indeed, asking nothing for himself, and giving all things to his cause. And I kissed him in turn, and thus we parted.
I think that the Makreezi repeats the legend. I suppose that it is ram-headed." "She told me also," I continued, "that they have a tradition, or rather a belief, which amounts to an article of faith, that if this sphinx or god, which, by the way, is lion, not ram-headed, and is called Harmac " "Harmac!" interrupted Higgs again. "That is one of the names of the sphinx Harmachis, god of dawn."
Oh! what a bitter fate is mine, to have brought misery on all I love, and, in the end, to die unloved! To thee I have atoned; to my angered Gods I have atoned; and now I go to find a way whereby I may atone to Cleopatra in that Hell where she is, and which I must share! For she loved me well, Harmachis; and, now that she is dead, methinks that, after thee, I loved her best of all.
"Methinks, most royal Harmachis, and beloved Cousin," she said, as she bent before me, "that we are already made acquainted." "Yea, Cousin," I answered, not without shamefacedness, for I had never before spoken to so fair a maid; "thou wert in the chariot with Cleopatra this day when I struggled with the Nubian?"
And how can a man die better than in a great endeavour to strike the gyves from his Country's limbs so that she again may stand in the face of Heaven and raise the shrill shout of Freedom, and, clad once more in a panoply of strength, trample under foot the fetters of her servitude, defying the tyrant nations of the earth to set their seal upon her brow? "Khem calls thee, Harmachis.
Time and grief had done their work indeed; scarce could I think myself the same as when, the royal Harmachis in all the splendour of my strength and youthful beauty I first had looked upon the woman's loveliness that did destroy me. And yet within me burned the same fire as of yore; yet I was not changed, for time and grief have no power to alter the immortal spirit of man.
If the Queen permits, I will expound it to her." And I rose, in order that I might pass round the couch and, as she read, stab her in the back. "Nay, Harmachis," she said quietly, and with a slow and lovely smile. "Bide thou where thou art, and give me the writing. By Serapis! thy face is too comely for me to wish to lose the sight of it!"
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