the side walls
the darkness was as intense as in a real tomb. On the smooth porphyry
columns, the glittering black marble and serpentine--here, there, and
everywhere--flickered the wavering reflection of the candlelight. The
draught kept it continually in motion, and it wavered to and fro in the
hall, like the restless souls of the damned. Wherever the eye turned it
met darkness. The end of the hall seemed black--black as the anteroom of
Hades--yet through it pierced a brilliant moving bar; sunbeams which
streamed from the stairway into the tomb and amid which danced tiny
motes. How the scene impressed the eye! The home of gloomy Hecate! And
the Queen and her impending fate. A picture flooded with light, standing
forth in radiant relief against the darkness of the heavy, majestic forms
surrounding it in a wide circle. This tomb in this light would be a
palace meet for the gloomy rule of the king of the troop of demons
conjured up by the power of a magician--if they have a ruler. But where
am I wandering? 'The artist!' I hear you exclaim again, 'the artist!
Instead of rushing forward and interposing, he stands studying the light
and its effects in the royal tomb.' Yes, yes; I had come too late, too
late--far too late! On the stairs leading to the lower story of the
building I saw it, but I was not to blame for the delay--not in the
least!

"At first I had been unable to see the men--or even a shadow; but I
beheld plainly in the brightest glare of the light the body of Mark
Antony on the couch and, in the dusk farther towards the right, Iras and
Charmian trying to raise a trapdoor. It was the one which closed the
passage leading to the combustible materials stored in the cellar. A sign
from the Queen had commanded them to fire it. The first steps of the
staircase, down which I was hastening, were already behind me--then--then
Proculejus, with two men, suddenly dashed from the intense darkness on
the other side. Scarcely able to control myself, I sprang down the
remaining steps, and while Iras's shrill cry, 'Poor Cleopatra, they will
capture you!' still rang in my ears, I saw the betrayed Queen turn from
the door through which, resolved on death, she was saying something to
Gallus, perceive Proculejus close behind her, thrust her hand into her
girdle, and with the speed of lightning--you have already heard so--throw
up her arm with the little dagger to bury the sharp blade in her breast.
What a picture! In the full radian