ny
sent a messenger to bid her welcome, and to invite her to come and sup
with him. She declined the invitation, saying that it was more proper
that he should come and sup with her. She would accordingly expect him
to come, she said, and her tents would be ready at the proper hour.
Antony complied with her proposal, and came to her entertainment. He was
received with a magnificence and splendor which amazed him. The tents
and pavilions where the entertainment was made were illuminated with an
immense number of lamps. These lamps were arranged in a very ingenious
and beautiful manner, so as to produce an illumination of the most
surprising brilliancy and beauty. The immense number and variety, too,
of the meats and wines, and of the vessels of gold and silver, with
which the tables were loaded, and the magnificence and splendor of the
dresses worn by Cleopatra and her attendants, combined to render the
whole scene one of bewildering enchantment.

The next day, Antony invited Cleopatra to come and return his visit;
but, though he made every possible effort to provide a banquet as
sumptuous and as sumptuously served as hers, he failed entirely in this
attempt, and acknowledged himself completely outdone. Antony was,
moreover, at these interviews, perfectly fascinated with Cleopatra's
charms. Her beauty, her wit, her thousand accomplishments, and, above
all, the tact, and adroitness, and self-possession which she displayed
in assuming at once so boldly, and carrying out so adroitly, the idea of
her social superiority over him, that he yielded his heart almost
immediately to her undisputed sway.

The first use which Cleopatra made of her power was to ask Antony, for
her sake, to order her sister Arsinoe to be slain. Arsinoe had gone, it
will be recollected, to Rome, to grace Caesar's triumph there, and had
afterward retired to Asia, where she was now living an exile. Cleopatra,
either from a sentiment of past revenge, or else from some apprehensions
of future danger, now desired that her sister should die. Antony readily
acceded to her request. He sent an officer in search of the unhappy
princess. The officer slew her where he found her, within the precincts
of a temple to which she had fled, supposing it a sanctuary which no
degree of hostility, however extreme, would have dared to violate.

Cleopatra remained at Tarsus for some time, revolving in an incessant
round of gayety and pleasure, and living in habits of unrestra