Ant. Which way? where? [Within.

Vent. This leads to the monument. [Within.

Alex. Ah me!  I hear him; yet I’m unprepared: 
My gift of lying’s gone;
And this court-devil, which I so oft have raised,
Forsakes me at my need.  I dare not stay;
Yet cannot far go hence. [Exit.

  Enter ANTONY and VENTIDIUS.

Ant. O happy Caesar! thou hast men to lead:  Think not ’tis thou hast conquered Antony; But Rome has conquered Egypt.  I’m betrayed.

Vent. Curse on this treacherous train!  Their soil and heaven infect them all with baseness:  And their young souls come tainted to the world With the first breath they draw.

Ant. The original villain sure no God created;
He was a bastard of the sun, by Nile,
Aped into man; with all his mother’s mud
Crusted about his soul.

Vent. The nation is
One universal traitor; and their queen
The very spirit and extract of them all.

Ant. Is there yet left
A possibility of aid from valour? 
Is there one god unsworn to my destruction? 
The least unmortgaged hope? for, if there be,
Methinks I cannot fall beneath the fate
Of such a boy as Caesar. 
The world’s one half is yet in Antony;
And from each limb of it, that’s hewed away,
The soul comes back to me.

Vent. There yet remain
Three legions in the town.  The last assault
Lopt off the rest:  if death be your design,—­
As I must wish it now,—­these are sufficient
To make a heap about us of dead foes,
An honest pile for burial.

Ant. They are enough. 
We’ll not divide our stars; but, side by side,
Fight emulous, and with malicious eyes
Survey each other’s acts:  So every death
Thou giv’st, I’ll take on me, as a just debt,
And pay thee back a soul.

Vent. Now you shall see I love you.  Not a word
Of chiding more.  By my few hours of life,
I am so pleased with this brave Roman fate,
That I would not be Caesar, to outlive you. 
When we put off this flesh, and mount together,
I shall be shown to all the etherial crowd,—­
Lo, this is he who died with Antony!

Ant. Who knows, but we may pierce through all their troops,
And reach my veterans yet? ’tis worth the tempting,
To o’erleap this gulph of fate,
And leave our wandering destinies behind.

  Enter ALEXAS, trembling.

Vent. See, see, that villain! 
See Cleopatra stampt upon that face,
With all her cunning, all her arts of falsehood! 
How she looks out through those dissembling eyes! 
How he sets his countenance for deceit,
And promises a lie, before he speaks! 
Let me dispatch him first. [Drawing.