VIICLEOPATRAQueen Berenice had a young sister called Cleopatra. Many other Egyptian princesses had borne the same name, but this girl became in later years the great Cleopatra who destroyed her kingdom, and killed herself, as one might say, on the corpse of her dead empire.About this time, she was twelve years of age, and no one could tell what her beauty would be. Her body, tall and thin, seemed out of place in a family where all the females were plump. She was ripening like some badly-grafted, bastard fruit of foreign, obscure origin. Some of her lineaments were hard and bold, as seen in Macedonia; other traits appeared as if inherited from the depths of Nubia, where womankind is tender and swarthy, for her mother had been a female of inferior race whose pedigree was doubtful. It was surprising to see Cleopatra’s lips, almost thick, under an aquiline nose of rather delicate shape. Her young breasts, very round, small, and widely separated, were crowned with a swelling aureola, thereby showing she was a daughter of the Nile.The little Princess lived in a spacious room, opening on to the vast sea and joined to the Queen’s apartment by a vestibule under a colonnade.Cleopatra passed the hours of the night on a bed of bluish silk, where the skin of her young limbs, already of a dark hue, took on still deeper tints.It came to pass that in the night when—far from her and her thoughts—the events already chronicled in these pages look place, Cleopatra rose long before dawn. She had slept but little and badly, being anxious about her troubles of puberty which she had just experienced, and disturbed by the extreme heat of the atmosphere.Without waking the woman who watched over her slumbers, she softly put her feet to the ground, slipped her golden bangles round her ankles, girded her little brown belly with a row of enormous pearls, and thus accoutred, left her chamber.In the monumental corridor, armed guards were also sound asleep, except one who stood sentinel at the door of the Queen’s room.He fell on his knees and whispered in dire terror, as if he had never before found himself thus struggling in such a conflict of duty and danger:“Princess Cleopatra, I crave thy pardon! I cannot let thee pass!”The lass drew herself up to her full height, knitted her brows violently, and dealt a dull blow on the soldier’s forehead with her clenched fist.“As for thee,” she said in smothered accents, but with ferocious meaning, “I’ll raise a cry of rape, and have thee quartered!”Then, in silence, she entered the Queens chamber.Berenice was asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, her hand hanging down.Over the great crimson couch, a hanging lamp mingled its feeble glare with that of the moon, reflected by the whiteness of the walls. The vague, luminous outlines of the slumbering woman’s supple nudity were thus enwrapped in misty shadow, between these two contrasting lights.Slender Cleopatra sat straight up on the edge of the bed. She took her sister’s face in her two little hands, waking Berenice up by touch and speech.“Why is your lover not with you?” asked Cleopatra.Berenice, startled, opened her lovely eyes.ill-060“Cleopatra! What are you doing here? What do you want of me?”“Why is your lover not with you?” repeated the girl, insisting.“Is he not with me?”“Certainly not! You know that well enough!”“True! He’s never here. Oh, Cleopatra, how cruel of you to wake me, to tell me so!”“But why is he always away?”“I see him when he chooses,” sighed Berenice, in grief. “During the day— for a minute or two.”“Did you not see him yesterday?”“Yes. I met him by the roadside. I was in my litter. He got in with me.”“As far as the Palace?”“No—not quite. He was still in sight nearly as far as the gates.”“What did you tell him?”“Oh, I was furious! I said most wicked things. Yes, darling, I did!”“Indeed?” rejoined the young girl, ironically.“Perhaps too wicked, for he never answered me. Just when I felt myself scarlet with rage, he recited a long fable for my benefit. As I did not quite understand it, I did not know how to reply. He slipped out of the litter, just as I thought of keeping him by my side.“Why not have called him back?”“I feared to displease him.”Cleopatra, swelling with indignation, took her sister by the shoulders, and looking her full in the face, spoke thus to her:“How now! You are the Queen, the people’s goddess! Half the world belongs to you; all that Rome does not rule is yours; you reign over the Nile and the entire ocean. You even reign over the heavens, since you are nearer to the ear of the Gods than anyone, and yet you cannot reign over the man you love!”“Reign . . . reign!” said Berenice, hanging her head. “That’s easy to say, but, look you, one does not reign over a lover as if dominating a slave.”“And why not, pray?”“Because . . . But you cannot understand! To love, is to prefer the happiness of another to that which we formerly selfishly desired before meeting the loved one. Should Demetrios be content, so likewise would I be, even weeping and far from his side. I wish for no delight that is not his, and all I bestow on him gives me great joy.”“You know not how to love,” said the young lass.Berenice smiled sadly, then she stretched her two arms stiffly on either side of her couch, as she jutted out her breasts and arched her loins.“Ah, little presumptuous virgin!” she sighed. “When for the first time you’ll swoon in loving conjunction, then only will you understand why one is never the queen of a man who causes you thus to lose your senses.”“A woman can always be a queen should she so will it.”“But she has no longer any power of will.”“I have! Why should you not be the same? You are my elder!”Berenice smiled again.“My little girl, upon whom do you exercise your strength of will? On which one of your dolls?”“On my lover!” said Cleopatra.Without allowing her sister time to find words to express her stupefaction, the damsel went on talking with growing vivacity.“I have got a lover! Yes, I’ve a lover! Why should I not have a sweetheart like everybody else, the same as you and my mother, and my aunt, and the lowest woman in Egypt? A lover? Of a surety! And why not, prithee, seeing that for six months past, I am a woman, and you have not yet found me a husband? Aye, Berenice, I have a lover. I’m no longer a little girl. I know now! I know! Be silent—say nothing, for I know more than you. I, too, have clasped my arms till they were fit to snap, over the naked back of a man who thought he was my master. I, too, have crooked my toes in the empty air, feeling as if life was leaving me, and I’ve died a hundred times over in the same way as you have swooned, but immediately afterwards, Berenice, I was on my feet, upstanding, erect! Say naught to me, for I am ashamed to claim you as my Sovereign—you, who are someone’s slave!”Little Cleopatra drew herself up to her full height, endeavouring to appear as tall as possible. She took her head in her hands, like an Asiatic queen trying on a tiara.ill-061Seated on the bed, her feet tucked under her, the elder sister listened, and then knelt, so she could come near to the young lass and place her hands on Cleopatra’s sloping, slender shoulders.“So you’ve a lover?” Berenice now spoke timidly, almost respectfully.“If you don’t believe me, you can look,” replied the girl, curtly.“When do you see him?” sighed Berenice.“Three times a day.”“Where?”“Do you want me to tell you?”“Yes.”“How comes it that you do not know this?” interrogated Cleopatra in her turn.“I know nothing, not even what goes on at the Palace. Demetrios is the only subject of conversation I care about. I have not watched over you as I should have done, my child. All this is my fault.”“Watch me if you like. When I can no longer have my own way, I’ll kill myself. Therefore, little care I, whatever happens!”“You are free,” replied Berenice, shaking her head. “At any rate, it is too late to restrain you. But, answer me, darling. You have a lover and—you manage to keep him to yourself?”“I have my way of holding him.”“Who taught you?”“I taught myself all alone. Such knowledge comes instinctively or never. When I was but six years old, I knew how I meant to hold my sweetheart later on in life.”“Will you not tell me?”“Follow me.”Berenice rose slowly, put on a tunic and a mantle, shook out her heavy tresses, adhering together by the sweat of the bed, and both the sisters left the room.ill-062Cleopatra crossed a courtyard.First went the youngest, straight along the vestibule, back to her bed. Under the mattress of fresh, dry byssos, she took a newly-cut key.“Follow me. It’s rather far,” she said, turning to her sister.In the middle of the passage was a staircase which she ascended. Then she glided along a never-ending colonnade, opened several doors, walking on carpets, white marble slabs and the mosaic floors of a score of empty, silent apartments.She descended a stone stairway, and stepped over the dark thresholds of clanging doors. Now and again, the two women came upon soldiers, resting on mats in couples, their spears close to their hands. Some long time afterwards, Cleopatra crossed a courtyard lit up by the rays of the full moon, and the shadow of a palm-tree caressed her hips. Berenice, wrapped in her blue mantle, still followed her.At last, they reached a massive door, clamped with iron like a warrior’s breastplate. In the lock, Cleopatra slipped her key, turning it twice. Then, pushing open the portal, a man—a very giant in the darkness—rose to his full height out of the depths of his dungeon.Berenice stirred with emotion, looked in, and with drooping head, said very softly:“Tis you, my child, who know not how to love. At least—not yet. I was quite right when I told you that.”“Love for love, I prefer mine,” said the girl. “He gives me naught but joy, at any rate.”So saying, erect on the prison threshold, and without making a step forward, she said to the man who stood in the shadow:“Come hither, and kiss my foot, son of a cur!”When he had done so, she pressed her mouth to his lips.
Queen Berenice had a young sister called Cleopatra. Many other Egyptian princesses had borne the same name, but this girl became in later years the great Cleopatra who destroyed her kingdom, and killed herself, as one might say, on the corpse of her dead empire.
About this time, she was twelve years of age, and no one could tell what her beauty would be. Her body, tall and thin, seemed out of place in a family where all the females were plump. She was ripening like some badly-grafted, bastard fruit of foreign, obscure origin. Some of her lineaments were hard and bold, as seen in Macedonia; other traits appeared as if inherited from the depths of Nubia, where womankind is tender and swarthy, for her mother had been a female of inferior race whose pedigree was doubtful. It was surprising to see Cleopatra’s lips, almost thick, under an aquiline nose of rather delicate shape. Her young breasts, very round, small, and widely separated, were crowned with a swelling aureola, thereby showing she was a daughter of the Nile.
The little Princess lived in a spacious room, opening on to the vast sea and joined to the Queen’s apartment by a vestibule under a colonnade.
Cleopatra passed the hours of the night on a bed of bluish silk, where the skin of her young limbs, already of a dark hue, took on still deeper tints.
It came to pass that in the night when—far from her and her thoughts—the events already chronicled in these pages look place, Cleopatra rose long before dawn. She had slept but little and badly, being anxious about her troubles of puberty which she had just experienced, and disturbed by the extreme heat of the atmosphere.
Without waking the woman who watched over her slumbers, she softly put her feet to the ground, slipped her golden bangles round her ankles, girded her little brown belly with a row of enormous pearls, and thus accoutred, left her chamber.
In the monumental corridor, armed guards were also sound asleep, except one who stood sentinel at the door of the Queen’s room.
He fell on his knees and whispered in dire terror, as if he had never before found himself thus struggling in such a conflict of duty and danger:
“Princess Cleopatra, I crave thy pardon! I cannot let thee pass!”
The lass drew herself up to her full height, knitted her brows violently, and dealt a dull blow on the soldier’s forehead with her clenched fist.
“As for thee,” she said in smothered accents, but with ferocious meaning, “I’ll raise a cry of rape, and have thee quartered!”
Then, in silence, she entered the Queens chamber.
Berenice was asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, her hand hanging down.
Over the great crimson couch, a hanging lamp mingled its feeble glare with that of the moon, reflected by the whiteness of the walls. The vague, luminous outlines of the slumbering woman’s supple nudity were thus enwrapped in misty shadow, between these two contrasting lights.
Slender Cleopatra sat straight up on the edge of the bed. She took her sister’s face in her two little hands, waking Berenice up by touch and speech.
“Why is your lover not with you?” asked Cleopatra.
Berenice, startled, opened her lovely eyes.
ill-060
“Cleopatra! What are you doing here? What do you want of me?”
“Why is your lover not with you?” repeated the girl, insisting.
“Is he not with me?”
“Certainly not! You know that well enough!”
“True! He’s never here. Oh, Cleopatra, how cruel of you to wake me, to tell me so!”
“But why is he always away?”
“I see him when he chooses,” sighed Berenice, in grief. “During the day— for a minute or two.”
“Did you not see him yesterday?”
“Yes. I met him by the roadside. I was in my litter. He got in with me.”
“As far as the Palace?”
“No—not quite. He was still in sight nearly as far as the gates.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Oh, I was furious! I said most wicked things. Yes, darling, I did!”
“Indeed?” rejoined the young girl, ironically.
“Perhaps too wicked, for he never answered me. Just when I felt myself scarlet with rage, he recited a long fable for my benefit. As I did not quite understand it, I did not know how to reply. He slipped out of the litter, just as I thought of keeping him by my side.
“Why not have called him back?”
“I feared to displease him.”
Cleopatra, swelling with indignation, took her sister by the shoulders, and looking her full in the face, spoke thus to her:
“How now! You are the Queen, the people’s goddess! Half the world belongs to you; all that Rome does not rule is yours; you reign over the Nile and the entire ocean. You even reign over the heavens, since you are nearer to the ear of the Gods than anyone, and yet you cannot reign over the man you love!”
“Reign . . . reign!” said Berenice, hanging her head. “That’s easy to say, but, look you, one does not reign over a lover as if dominating a slave.”
“And why not, pray?”
“Because . . . But you cannot understand! To love, is to prefer the happiness of another to that which we formerly selfishly desired before meeting the loved one. Should Demetrios be content, so likewise would I be, even weeping and far from his side. I wish for no delight that is not his, and all I bestow on him gives me great joy.”
“You know not how to love,” said the young lass.
Berenice smiled sadly, then she stretched her two arms stiffly on either side of her couch, as she jutted out her breasts and arched her loins.
“Ah, little presumptuous virgin!” she sighed. “When for the first time you’ll swoon in loving conjunction, then only will you understand why one is never the queen of a man who causes you thus to lose your senses.”
“A woman can always be a queen should she so will it.”
“But she has no longer any power of will.”
“I have! Why should you not be the same? You are my elder!”
Berenice smiled again.
“My little girl, upon whom do you exercise your strength of will? On which one of your dolls?”
“On my lover!” said Cleopatra.
Without allowing her sister time to find words to express her stupefaction, the damsel went on talking with growing vivacity.
“I have got a lover! Yes, I’ve a lover! Why should I not have a sweetheart like everybody else, the same as you and my mother, and my aunt, and the lowest woman in Egypt? A lover? Of a surety! And why not, prithee, seeing that for six months past, I am a woman, and you have not yet found me a husband? Aye, Berenice, I have a lover. I’m no longer a little girl. I know now! I know! Be silent—say nothing, for I know more than you. I, too, have clasped my arms till they were fit to snap, over the naked back of a man who thought he was my master. I, too, have crooked my toes in the empty air, feeling as if life was leaving me, and I’ve died a hundred times over in the same way as you have swooned, but immediately afterwards, Berenice, I was on my feet, upstanding, erect! Say naught to me, for I am ashamed to claim you as my Sovereign—you, who are someone’s slave!”
Little Cleopatra drew herself up to her full height, endeavouring to appear as tall as possible. She took her head in her hands, like an Asiatic queen trying on a tiara.
ill-061
Seated on the bed, her feet tucked under her, the elder sister listened, and then knelt, so she could come near to the young lass and place her hands on Cleopatra’s sloping, slender shoulders.
“So you’ve a lover?” Berenice now spoke timidly, almost respectfully.
“If you don’t believe me, you can look,” replied the girl, curtly.
“When do you see him?” sighed Berenice.
“Three times a day.”
“Where?”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“How comes it that you do not know this?” interrogated Cleopatra in her turn.
“I know nothing, not even what goes on at the Palace. Demetrios is the only subject of conversation I care about. I have not watched over you as I should have done, my child. All this is my fault.”
“Watch me if you like. When I can no longer have my own way, I’ll kill myself. Therefore, little care I, whatever happens!”
“You are free,” replied Berenice, shaking her head. “At any rate, it is too late to restrain you. But, answer me, darling. You have a lover and—you manage to keep him to yourself?”
“I have my way of holding him.”
“Who taught you?”
“I taught myself all alone. Such knowledge comes instinctively or never. When I was but six years old, I knew how I meant to hold my sweetheart later on in life.”
“Will you not tell me?”
“Follow me.”
Berenice rose slowly, put on a tunic and a mantle, shook out her heavy tresses, adhering together by the sweat of the bed, and both the sisters left the room.
ill-062
Cleopatra crossed a courtyard.
First went the youngest, straight along the vestibule, back to her bed. Under the mattress of fresh, dry byssos, she took a newly-cut key.
“Follow me. It’s rather far,” she said, turning to her sister.
In the middle of the passage was a staircase which she ascended. Then she glided along a never-ending colonnade, opened several doors, walking on carpets, white marble slabs and the mosaic floors of a score of empty, silent apartments.
She descended a stone stairway, and stepped over the dark thresholds of clanging doors. Now and again, the two women came upon soldiers, resting on mats in couples, their spears close to their hands. Some long time afterwards, Cleopatra crossed a courtyard lit up by the rays of the full moon, and the shadow of a palm-tree caressed her hips. Berenice, wrapped in her blue mantle, still followed her.
At last, they reached a massive door, clamped with iron like a warrior’s breastplate. In the lock, Cleopatra slipped her key, turning it twice. Then, pushing open the portal, a man—a very giant in the darkness—rose to his full height out of the depths of his dungeon.
Berenice stirred with emotion, looked in, and with drooping head, said very softly:
“Tis you, my child, who know not how to love. At least—not yet. I was quite right when I told you that.”
“Love for love, I prefer mine,” said the girl. “He gives me naught but joy, at any rate.”
So saying, erect on the prison threshold, and without making a step forward, she said to the man who stood in the shadow:
“Come hither, and kiss my foot, son of a cur!”
When he had done so, she pressed her mouth to his lips.