Cleopatra

“ The radiant and splendid image of Cleopatra, with her golden-pointed diadem and her imperial purple, standing above a nation on their knees, illumined his nightly dreams and his waking thoughts. Like some imprudent man who has dared to look at the sun and forever thereafter beholds an impalpable blot floating before his eyes, so Meïamoun ever beheld Cleopatra. Eagles may gaze undazzled at the sun, but what diamond eye can with impunity fix itself upon a beautiful woman, a beautiful queen? ”

“ This Cleopatra has cast her fatal wiles about thee, and thou goest near to loving her, Harmachis—to loving her whom to-morrow thou must slay! Ay, stand and stare at that wreath in thy hand—the wreath thou couldst not send to join my kerchief—sure Cleopatra wore it but to-night! The perfume of the hair of Cæsar's mistress—Cæsar's and others'—yet mingles with the odour of its roses! Now, prithee, Harmachis, how far didst thou carry the matter on yonder balcony? for in that hole where I lay hid I could not hear or see. 'Tis a sweet spot for lovers, is it not?—ay, and a sweet hour, too? ”

“ I looked up, and thus torn, panting, my white garments stained with the blood that had rushed from the mouth and nostrils of the mighty Nubian, I for the first time saw Cleopatra face to face. Her chariot was all of gold, and drawn by milk-white steeds. She sat in it with two fair girls, clad in Greek attire, standing one on either side, fanning her with glittering fans. On her head was the covering of Isis, the golden horns between which rested the moon’s round disk and the emblem of Osiris’ throne, with the uræus twined around. ”

“ When the sign comes to thee, arise, go to Cleopatra, and in such manner as I shall put into thy heart do Heaven's vengeance upon her! And now for thyself one word, for thou hast put Me from thee, Harmachis, and no more shall I come face to face with thee till, cycles hence, the last fruit of thy sin hath ceased to be upon this earth! Yet, through the vastness of the unnumbered years, remember thou this: the Love Divine is Love Eternal, which cannot be extinguished, though it be everlastingly estranged. ”

“ But Queen Cleopatra did not wear that air of satisfaction which becomes a woman conscious of being perfectly beautiful and perfectly well dressed. She tossed and turned in her little bed, and her sudden movements momentarily disarranged the folds of her gauzy conopeum, which Charmion as often rearranged with inexhaustible patience, and without ceasing to wave her fan.
"This room is stifling," said Cleopatra; "even if Pthah the God of Fire established his forges in here, he could not make it hotter; the air is like the breath of a furnace!" ”

“ At midday Cleopatra sleeps in her inner hall which looks over the gardens to the harbour. At that hour to-morrow, then, I will meet thee at the gates of the palace, whither thou shalt come boldly asking for the Lady Charmion. I will make appointment for thee with Cleopatra, so that she shall see thee alone when she wakes, and the rest shall be for thee, Harmachis. For much she loves to play with the mysteries of magic, and I have known her stand whole nights watching the stars and making a pretence to read them. ”

“ CLEOPATRA. 'Tis sweating labour To bear such idleness so near the heart As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me; Since my becomings kill me, when they do not Eye well to you: your honour calls you hence; Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly, And all the gods go with you! upon your sword Sit laurel victory! and smooth success Be strew'd before your feet!
ANTONY. Let us go. Come; Our separation so abides, and flies, That thou, residing here, goes yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. Away! ”

“ The queen, the goddess Cleopatra, lying beneath an awning of cloth of gold which shades the deck, appears as the painters usually represent Aphrodite, surrounded by rosy children like the Loves, beautiful young girls scarcely clad with lightest drapery as Graces and sea-nymphs, bearing garlands of roses and the lotus-flower and waving great fans of the feathers of the ibis. ”

“ Cleopatra seated him beside her upon a throne with golden griffins on either side, and clapped her little hands together. Instantly lines of fire, bands of sparkling light, outlined all the projections of the architecture—the eyes of the sphinxes flamed with phosphoric lightnings; the bull-headed idols breathed flame; the elephants, in lieu of perfumed water, spouted aloft bright columns of crimson fire; arms of bronze, each bearing a torch, started from the walls, and blazing aigrettes bloomed in the sculptured hearts of the lotos flowers. ”

“ But Cleopatra came to me, and, seating herself beside me, she strove to comfort me, throwing her arms about my neck.
“Nay, love, look up,” she said; “all is not lost for thee, nor am I angered against thee. We did play a mighty game; but, as I warned thee, I matched my woman’s magic against thine, and I have conquered. But I will be open with thee. Both as Queen and woman thou hast my pity—ay, and more; nor do I love to see thee plunged in sorrow. It was well and right that thou shouldst strive to win back that throne my fathers seized, and the ancient liberty of Egypt. ”

“ And with them dwelt every evil of that greater sort, which fearing nothing, and making a mock of laws, has taken empires for its place of play, and, smiling, watered the growth of its desires with the rich blood of men. In her breast they gathered, together fashioning that Cleopatra whom no man may draw, and yet whom no man, having seen, ever can forget. They fashioned her grand as the Spirit of Storm, lovely as Lightning, cruel as Pestilence, yet with a heart; and what she did is known. Woe to the world when such another comes to curse it! ”

“ I was overcome; thinking of the morrow night, shame and sorrow smote me. I, her friend!—I, whose assassin dagger lay against my breast! I bent my head, and a sob or a groan, I know not which, burst from the agony of my heart.
But Cleopatra, thinking only that I was moved beyond myself by the surprise of her graciousness, smiled sweetly, and said:
“It grows late; to-morrow night when thou bringest the auguries we will speak again, O my friend Harmachis, and thou shalt answer me.” ”

“ Cleopatra, clad in her robes of state, attended by the officers of her Court, among whom I stood, sat in the great hall on her throne of gold, and bade the heralds admit the Ambassador of Antony, the Triumvir. The great doors were thrown wide, and amidst the blare of trumpets and salutes of the Gallic guards the Roman came in, clad in glittering golden armour and a scarlet cloak of silk, and followed by his suite of officers. ”

“ Cleopatra stands among the few daughters of Eve pre-eminent for wit, charm, power and perhaps beauty, and to this must be added ambition and vice.
“The laughing queen who held the world’s great hands,” having won the heart of the world’s greatest rulers, yet lays her magic touch upon the centuries. Artists and writers have never tired of limning her personal charms and special characteristics. No colors have been too bright, none too dark to be used. ”

“ Cleopatra was by birth an Egyptian; by ancestry and descent she was a Greek. Thus, while Alexandria and the Delta of the Nile formed the scene of the most important events and incidents of her history, it was the blood of Macedon which flowed in her veins. Her character and action are marked by the genius, the courage, the originality, and the impulsiveness pertaining to the stock from which she sprung. ”

“ Nay, answer not—I know all; and I tell thee this: thou hast not measured the depth of Cleopatra's perfidy, nor canst thou dream the blackness of her wicked heart. She had surely slain thee in Alexandria had she not feared that thy slaughter being noised abroad might bring trouble on her. Therefore has she brought thee here to kill thee secretly. For what more canst thou give her? She has thy heart's love, and is wearied of thy strength and beauty. She has robbed thee of thy royal birthright and brought thee, a King, to stand amidst the waiting-women behind her at her feasts ”

“ In honour of Cleopatra, our illustrious Queen, and her generous friend, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. Let all who love her and the divine Antony, the new Herakles and Dionysus—both will soon make their entry among us crowned with the laurels of victory—join the Regent and every well-disposed person in seizing yonder bit of land so meanly withheld by base avarice and a sentiment—a sentiment, do you hear?—which I do not name more plainly, simply because wickedness is repulsive to me, and I do not stand here as an accuser. ”

“ Listen, Harmachis," and she grasped my robe: "when thou wast great, and all power lay within thy grasp, thou didst reject me. Wilt reject me now that Cleopatra hast cast thee from her—now that thou art poor and shamed and with no pillow to thy head? Still am I fair, and still I worship thee. Let me fly with thee, and make atonement for my lifelong love. Or, if this be too great a thing to ask, let me be but as thy sister and thy servant—thy very slave, so that I may still look upon thy face, and share thy trouble and minister to thee. ”

“ For years Cleopatra had been his inspiration, his passion, his lode-star; where else to fly he knew not, his old world was, all too deservedly, against him. Yet it was not now for joyance that he sought, though he followed her; he steeled his heart against her sorceries, and shut himself up in morbid communings with his own spirit. He would not see her and for some time it was in vain that her maidens pleaded with and tried to comfort him.
It seemed for the moment as if Cleopatra’s power, she who “governed men by change” had failed. Her heart cried out,
“Where is Mark Antony? ”

“ From his new dwelling he could look across the water to Cleopatra’s palace; and at night the blaze of the Pharos beacon, and the many gleaming windows on the Lochias Promontory and around the harbour, all reflected with the stars in the dark water, must have formed a spectacle romantic enough for any dreamer. In the daytime he could watch the vessels entering or leaving the port; and behind him the noise and bustle of Cleopatra’s busy Alexandrians was wafted to his ears to serve as a correct subject for his Timonian curses. ”

“ Ay, back to Abouthis, and from Abouthis to Alexandria, and from Alexandria to the Throne of thy fathers, Harmachis! Listen, now; things are thus: Thou knowest how Cleopatra, the Queen, fled into Syria when that false eunuch Pothinus set the will of her father Aulêtes at naught and raised her brother Ptolemy to the sole lordship of Egypt. ”

“ On entering Cleopatra's room, however, they beheld a shocking spectacle. Cleopatra was lying dead upon a couch. One of her women was upon the floor, dead too. The other, whose name was Charmian, was sitting over the body of her mistress, fondly caressing her, arranging flowers in her hair, and adorning her diadem. The messengers of Octavius, on witnessing this spectacle, were overcome with amazement, and demanded of Charmian what it could mean. "It is all right," said Charmian. "Cleopatra has acted in a manner worthy of a princess descended from so noble a line of kings." ”

“ And at the further end of the chamber, on a couch of gleaming silk and sheltered by a net of finest gauze, Cleopatra lay asleep. There she lay—the fairest thing that man ever saw—fairer than a dream, and the web of her dark hair flowed all about her. One white, rounded arm made a pillow for her head, and one hung down towards the ground. Her rich lips were parted in a smile, showing the ivory lines of teeth ”

“ If we each take calmly whatever befalls us our masters try to heal our wounds, but if we resist may the gods have mercy on us! for Cleopatra is like a strung bow, which sets the arrow flying as soon as a child, a mouse, a breath of air even touches it—like an over-full cup which brims over if a leaf, another drop, a single tear falls into it. We should, any one of us, soon be worn out by such a life, but she needs excitement, turmoil and amusement at every hour. ”

“ Having thus fixed the chaplet, she curtsied low before me, and with the softest tone of mockery named me, in the Greek tongue, “Harmachis, King of Love.” Then Cleopatra laughed and pledged me as “King of Love,” and so did all the company, finding the jest a merry one. For in Alexandria they love not those who live straitly and turn aside from women. ”

“ It was not enough that Cæsar for love of Cleopatra had not reduced Egypt to a Roman province; not enough that he had installed this foreigner in Rome, in his villa on the banks of the Tiber, and that he lavished on her every mark of honor and every testimony of love;—now he dedicated, in the temple of a national divinity, the statue of this prostitute of Alexandria, this barbarous queen of the land of magicians, of thaumaturgy [wonder-working] , of eunuchs, of servile dwellers by the Nile, these worshipers of stuffed birds and gods with the heads of beasts. ”

“ Even after the lapse of many years the stone swung round, showing a little opening, through which a man might scarcely creep. As it swung, a mighty bat, white in colour as though with unreckoned age, and such as I had never seen before for bigness, for his measure was the measure of a hawk, flew forth and for a moment hovered over Cleopatra, then sailed slowly up and up in circles, till at last he was lost in the bright light of the moon.
But Cleopatra uttered a cry of terror, and the eunuch, who was watching, fell down in fear, believing it to be the guardian Spirit of the pyramid. ”