ar and vivid hues during the banquet which
had closed a few hours ago. Now these scenes, condensed into a narrow
compass, again passed before her mental vision, but only to reveal more
distinctly the depth of misery of this hour. At last anguish forced even
the clearest memories into oblivion: she saw nothing save the tortures
of her lover; her brain, still active, revealed solely the gulf at her
feet, and the tomb which yawned not only for Antony, but for herself.

Unable to think of the happiness enjoyed in the past or to hope for it
in the future, she gave herself up to uncontrolled despair, and no woman
of the people could have yielded more absolutely to the consuming grief
which rent her heart, or expressed it in wilder, more frantic language,
than did this great Queen, this woman who as a child had been so
sensitive to the slightest suffering, and whose after-life had certainly
not taught her to bear sorrow with patience. After Charmian, at the
dying man's request, had given him some wine, he found strength to speak
coherently, instead of moaning and sighing.

He tenderly urged Cleopatra to secure her own safety, if it could be
done without dishonour, and mentioned Proculejus as the man most worthy
of her confidence among the friends of Octavianus. Then he entreated her
not to mourn for him, but to consider him happy; for he had enjoyed the
richest favours of Fortune. He owed his brightest hours to her love; but
he had also been the first and most powerful man on earth. Now he
was dying in the arms of Love, honourable as a Roman who succumbed to
Romans.

In this conviction he died after a short struggle.

Cleopatra had watched his last breath, closed his eyes, and then thrown
herself tearlessly on her lover's body. At last she fainted, and lay
unconscious with her head upon his marble breast.

The private secretary had witnessed all this, and then returned with
tearful eyes to the second story. There he met Gorgias, who had climbed
the scaffolding, and told him what he had seen and heard from the
stairs. But his story was scarcely ended when a carriage stopped at the
Corner of the Muses and an aristocratic Roman alighted. This was the
very Proculejus whom the dying Antony had recommended to the woman he
loved as worthy of her confidence.

"In fact," Gorgias continued, "he seemed in form and features one of the
noblest of his haughty race. He came commissioned by Octavianus, and
is said to be warmly devoted t