"Why, here's a sum large enough to buy three cows--a little field!"

The cup is now filled with gold pieces.

"Come, then! a hundred slaves, soldiers, a heap wherewith to buy----"

Here the granulations of the cup's rim, detaching themselves, form a
pearl necklace.

"With this jewel here, one might even win the Emperor's wife!"

With a shake Antony makes the necklace slip over his wrist. He holds the
cup in his left hand, and with his right arm raises the torch to shed
more light upon it. Like water trickling down from a basin, it pours
itself out in continuous waves, so as to make a hillock on the
sand--diamonds, carbuncles, and sapphires mingled with huge pieces of
gold bearing the effigies of kings.

"What? What? Staters, shekels, darics, aryandics! Alexander, Demetrius,
the Ptolemies, Caesar! But each of them had not as much! Nothing
impossible in it! More to come! And those rays which dazzle me! Ah! my
heart overflows! How good this is! Yes! ... Yes! ... more! Never enough!
It did not matter even if I kept flinging it into the sea; more would
remain. Why lose any of it? I will keep it all, without telling anyone
about it. I will dig myself a chamber in the rock, the interior of which
will be lined with strips of bronze; and thither will I come to feel the
piles of gold sinking under my heels. I will plunge my arms into it as
if into sacks of corn. I would like to anoint my face with it--to sleep
on top of it!"

He lets go the torch in order to embrace the heap, and falls to the
ground on his breast. He gets up again. The place is perfectly empty!

"What have I done? If I died during that brief space of time, the result
would have been Hell--irrevocable Hell!"

A shudder runs through his frame.

"So, then, I am accursed? Ah! no, this is all my own fault! I let myself
be caught in every trap. There is no one more idiotic or more infamous.
I would like to beat myself, or, rather, to tear myself out of my body.
I have restrained myself too long. I need to avenge myself, to strike,
to kill! It is as if I had a troop of wild beasts in my soul. I would
like, with a stroke of a hatchet in the midst of a crowd----Ah! a
dagger! ..."

He flings himself upon his knife, which he has just seen. The knife
slips from his hand, and Antony remains propped against the wall of his
cell, his mouth wide open, motionless--like one in a trance.

All the surroundings have disappeared.

He finds himself in Alexandria on th