stly manner, she told him that the
dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three
hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a
wager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner
was as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony
called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said
that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and
drink the ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, the
largest known in the world, which, like the diamonds of European kings,
had come to her with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued at
that large sum.

[Illustration: 338.jpg EGYPTIAN PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA]

On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass of
vinegar, and she took one of these earrings from her ear and dropped
it into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one of the
guests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other from
the queen's ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, and
then declared that Antony had lost his bet. The pearl which was saved
was afterwards cut in two and made into a pair of earrings for the
statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the wager may
be said to have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the two
whole ones.

The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to her
great powers of mind, which were all turned to the art of pleasing, had
quite overcome Antony; he had sent for her as her master, but he was
now her slave. Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as an
instrument of many strings; she spoke readily to every ambassador in his
own language; and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who could
understand the languages of all her subjects: Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopie,
Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. With these charms, at the age
of five-and-twenty, the luxurious Antony could deny her nothing. The
first favour which she asked of her lover equals any cruelty that we
have met with in this history: it was, that he would have her sister
Arsinoe put to death. Caesar had spared her life, after his triumph,
through love of Cleopatra; but he was mistaken in the heart of his
mistress; she would have been then better pleased at Arsinoe's death;
and Antony, at her bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, at
Ephesus.

Though Fulvia, t