This was the language of the cold-hearted foe, secure of superior power.
How sadly, too, she had been disappointed in the hope--that the veterans
who had served under Antony would desert their new commander at the first
summons and flock to his standard!--for all her husband's efforts in this
direction, spite of the bewitching power of his eloquence, failed, while
every hour brought tidings of the treacherous desertion from his army of
individual warriors and whole maniples. His foe deemed his cause so weak
that he did not even resist Mark Antony's attempts to win the soldiers by
promises.

From all these signs Cleopatra now saw plainly, in her lover's victory,
only the last flicker of a dying fire; but so long as it burned he should
see her follow its light.

Therefore she had entered the festal hall with the victor of the day.
She had witnessed a strange festival. It began with tears and reminded
Cleopatra of the saying that she herself resembled a banquet served to
celebrate a victory before the battle was won. The cup-bearers had
scarcely advanced to the guests with their golden vessels when Antony
turned to them, exclaiming: "Pour generously, men; perhaps to-morrow you
will serve another master!"

Then, unlike his usual self, he grew thoughtful and murmured under his
breath, "And I shall probably be lying outside a corpse, a miserable
nothing."

Loud sobs from the cup-bearers and servants followed these words; but he
addressed them calmly, assuring them that he would not take them into a
battle from which he expected an honourable death rather than rescue and