exertion which she had just made, with tangled, dishevelled locks,
gasping and moaning, Cleopatra, as if out of her senses, tore open her
robe, beat her breast, and lacerated it with her nails. Then, pressing
her own beautiful face on her lover's wound to stanch the flowing blood,
she lavished upon him all the endearing names which she had bestowed on
their love.

His terrible suffering made her forget her own and the sad fate
impending. Tears of pity fell like the refreshing drops of a shower upon
the still unwithered blossoms of their love, and brought those which,
during the preceding night, had revived anew, to their last magnificent
unfolding.

Boundless, limitless as her former passion for this man, was now the
grief with which his agonizing death filled her heart.

All that Mark Antony had been to her in the heyday of life, all their
mutual experiences, all that each had received from the other, had
returned to her memory in clear and vivid hues during the banquet which
had closed a few hours ago. Now these scenes, condensed into a narrow
compass, again passed before her mental vision, but only to reveal more
distinctly the depth of misery of this hour. At last anguish forced even
the clearest memories into oblivion: she saw nothing save the tortures of
her lover; her brain, still active, revealed solely the gulf at her feet,
and the tomb which yawned not only for Antony, but for herself.

Unable to think of the happiness enjoyed in the past or to hope for it in
the future, she gave herself up to uncontrolled despair, and no woman of
the people could have yielded more absolutely to the consuming grief
which rent her heart, or expressed it in wilder, more frantic language,