than did this great Queen, this woman who as a child had been so
sensitive to the slightest suffering, and whose after-life had certainly
not taught her to bear sorrow with patience. After Charmian, at the
dying man's request, had given him some wine, he found strength to speak
coherently, instead of moaning and sighing.

He tenderly urged Cleopatra to secure her own safety, if it could be done
without dishonour, and mentioned Proculejus as the man most worthy of her
confidence among the friends of Octavianus. Then he entreated her not to
mourn for him, but to consider him happy; for he had enjoyed the richest
favours of Fortune. He owed his brightest hours to her love; but he had
also been the first and most powerful man on earth. Now he was dying in
the arms of Love, honourable as a Roman who succumbed to Romans.

In this conviction he died after a short struggle.

Cleopatra had watched his last breath, closed his eyes, and then thrown
herself tearlessly on her lover's body. At last she fainted, and lay
unconscious with her head upon his marble breast.

The private secretary had witnessed all this, and then returned with
tearful eyes to the second story. There he met Gorgias, who had climbed
the scaffolding, and told him what he had seen and heard from the stairs.
But his story was scarcely ended when a carriage stopped at the Corner of
the Muses and an aristocratic Roman alighted. This was the very
Proculejus whom the dying Antony had recommended to the woman he
loved as worthy of her confidence.

"In fact," Gorgias continued, "he seemed in form and features one of the
noblest of his haughty race. He came commissioned by Octavianus, and is