“Use it, nestle there whenever you need it, to the end,” cried Charmian, deeply moved.

“To the end,” repeated Cleopatra, wiping her eyes.  “It began to-day, I think.  I have just spent an hour alone.  I meant to commit a crime, and you know how impatiently passion sweeps me along.  But what misfortunes have assailed me!  The army destroyed; the desertion of Herod and Pinarius; Antony’s generous, trusting heart torn by base treachery, his soul darkened; the reconstruction of the canal, the last hope—­Gorgias brought the news—­the same as destroyed.  Just then little Alexander came to show me his bird’s nest.  Everything else in the garden seemed to him worthless by comparison.  This awakened new thoughts, and now here is the little house which the children have built with their own hands.  All these things forced me by some mysterious power to look back along the course of my life to the distant days in your father’s house—­I—­These children!  Upon what different foundations our lives have been built!  I made them begin at the point I had gained when youth lay behind me.  My childhood commenced among the disorders of the government, clouded by my father’s exile and my mother’s death, on the brink of ruin.  That of the twins—­they are ten years old—­will soon be over—­and now, after enjoying pleasures not one of which was bestowed on me, they must endure the same sorrow.  But did not we have better ones?  What they daily possessed we only dreamed of in our simple garden.  How often I let you share the radiant visions which my soul revealed to me!  You willingly accompanied me into the splendid fairy world of my dreams.  All that my imagination conjured up during the years of quiet and repose accompanied me into my after-life.  Again and again I have beheld them, rich and powerful, upon the throne.  The means of rendering the vision a varity were at hand; and when I met the man whose own life resembled the realization of a dream, I recalled those childish fancies and made them facts.  The marvels with which I adorned my lover’s existence were childish dreams to which I gave tangible form.  This garden is an image of the life to which I intended to rise; in reality, fell.  We collected within the limits of this bit of earth everything which can delight the senses; not a single one is omitted in this narrow space, whose crowded maze of pleasures fairly impede freedom of movement.  Yet in your home, and guided by your wise father, I had learned to be content with so little, and commenced the struggle to attain peace.  That painless peace—­our chief good—­whence came it?  Through me it was lost to you both But the children—­I made them begin their lives in an arena of every disturbing influence; and now I see how their own healthy natures yearn to escape from the dazzling wealth of colour, the stupefying fragrance, the bewildering songs and twittering.  They long to return to the untilled earth, where the life of struggling mortals began.