One of Cleopatra's Nights Read Free Page A

slave
clothed in a short tunic hanging in folds like an Albanian petticoat,
and a panther-skin thrown over his shoulders, entered with the
suddenness of an apparition; with his left hand balancing a tray laden
with cups, and slices of watermelon, and carrying in his right a long
vase with a spout like a modern teapot.
    The slave filled one of these cups, pouring the liquor into it from a
considerable height with marvellous dexterity, and placed it before the
queen. Cleopatra merely touched the beverage with her lips, laid the cup
down beside her, and turning upon Charmion her beautiful liquid black
eyes, lustrous with living light, exclaimed:
    "O Charmion, I am weary unto death!"
Chapter II
    Charmion, at once anticipating a confidence, assumed a look of pained
sympathy, and drew nearer to her mistress.
    "I am horribly weary!" continued Cleopatra, letting her arms fall like
one utterly discouraged. "This Egypt crushes, annihilates me; this sky
with its implacable azure is sadder than the deep night of Erebus; never
a cloud, never a shadow, and always that red, sanguine sun, which glares
down upon you like the eye of a Cyclops. Ah, Charmion, I would give a
pearl for one drop of rain! From the inflamed pupil of that sky of
bronze no tear has ever yet fallen upon the desolation of this land; it
is only a vast covering for a tomb—the dome of a necropolis; a sky dead
and dried up like the mummies it hangs over; it weighs upon my shoulders
like an over-heavy mantle; it constrains and terrifies me; it seems to
me that I could not stand up erect without striking my forehead against
it. And, moreover, this land is truly an awful land; all things in it
are gloomy, enigmatic, incomprehensible. Imagination has produced in it
only monstrous chimeras and monuments immeasurable; this architecture
and this art fill me with fear; those colossi, whose stone-entangled
limbs compel them to remain eternally sitting with their hands upon
their knees, weary me with their stupid immobility; they trouble my eyes
and my horizon. When, indeed, shall the giant come who is to take them
by the hand and relieve them from their long watch of twenty centuries?
For even granite itself must grow weary at last! Of what master, then,
do they await the coming, to leave their mountain-seats and rise in
token of respect? Of what invisible flock are those huge sphinxes the
guardians, crouching like dogs on the watch, that they never close their
eyelids, and forever extend their claws in readiness to seize? Why are
their stony eyes so obstinately fixed upon eternity and infinity? What
weird secret do their firmly locked lips retain within their breasts? On
the right hand, on the left, whithersoever one turns, only frightful
monsters are visible—dogs with the heads of men; men with the heads of
dogs; chimeras begotten of hideous couplings in the shadowy depths of
the labyrinths; figures of Anubis, Typhon, Osiris; partridges with great
yellow eyes that seem to pierce through you with their inquisitorial
gaze, and see beyond and behind you things which one dare not speak
of—a family of animals and horrible gods with scaly wings, hooked
beaks, trenchant claws, ever ready to seize and devour you should you
venture to cross the threshold of the temple, or lift a corner of the
veil.
    "Upon the walls, upon the columns, on the ceilings, on the floors, upon
palaces and temples, in the long passages and the deepest pits of the
necropoli, even within the bowels of the earth where light never comes,
and where the flames of the torches die for want of air, forever and
everywhere are sculptured and painted interminable hieroglyphics,
telling in language unintelligible of things which are no longer known,
and which belong, doubtless, to the vanished creations of the
past—prodigious buried works wherein a whole nation was sacrificed to
write the epitaph of one king! Mystery and granite—this is Egypt! Truly
a fair land for a young woman, and a young queen.
    "Menacing and