“While she is fortifying the mouths of the Nile and the frontiers of the country, building ship after ship, arming and negotiating, she can not resist him when he summons her to new pleasures.

“Though so many of the traits which rendered him great and noble have vanished, she can not give up the old love and clings steadfastly to him because, because—­I know not why.  A woman’s loving heart does not question motives and laws.  Besides, he is the father of her children and, in playing with them, he regains the old joyousness of mood so enthralling to the heart.

“Since Archibius has taken charge of them, they can dispense with Euphronion, their tutor.  The clever man knows Rome, Octavianus, and those who surround him, so he was chosen as an envoy.  His object was to induce the conqueror to transfer the sovereignty of Egypt to the boys Antonius Helios, and Alexander, but Caesar vouchsafed no answer to the mediator in Antony’s affairs—­nay, did not even grant him an audience.

“To Cleopatra Octavianus promised friendly treatment, and the fulfilment of her wish concerning the boys if—­and now came the repetition of the old demand—­she would put Antony out of the world or deliver him into his hands.

“This demand, which contains base treachery, was impossible for her noble soul.  Since she had resolved to build the tomb, granting it became impossible, yet Octavianus made every effort to tempt her to the base deed.  True, the death of this one man would have spared much bloodshed.  The Caesar knows how to choose his tools.  He sent here as negotiator a clever young man, who possessed great charms of mind and person.  No plan to prejudice the Queen against her husband and persuade her to commit the treachery was left untried.  He went so far as to assure Cleopatra that in former years she had won the Caesar’s heart, and that he still loved her.  She accepted these assurances at their true value and remained steadfast.

“Antony at first paid no heed to the intriguer.  But when he learned what means he employed, and especially how he made use of the surrender of one of Caesar’s murderers, which he himself had long regretted, to brand him as an ungrateful traitor, he would not have been Mark Antony if he had accepted it quietly.  He was completely his old self when he ordered the smooth fellow—­who, however, had come as the ambassador of the mighty victor—­to be scourged, sent him back to Rome, and wrote a letter to Octavianus, in which he complained of the man’s arrogance and presumption, adding—­spite of my heavy heart I can not help smiling when I think of it—­that misfortune had rendered him unusually irritable; yet if his action perhaps displeased Caesar, he might treat his freedman Hipparchus, who was in his power, as he had served Thyrsus!

“You see that his gay arrogance has not deserted him.  Trouble slips away from him as rain is shaken from the coarse military cloak which he wore in the Parthian war, and therefore it cannot exert its purifying power.