marched during the night to the
neighbouring hills overlooking the sea.

The notes sounded bold and warlike. The well-armed galleys presented a
stately appearance. How often Cleopatra had seen unexpected events occur,
apparent impossibilities become possible! Had not the victory of
Octavianus at Actium been a miracle? What if Fate, like a capricious
ruler, now changed from frowns to smiles? What if Antony proved himself
the hero of yesterday, the general he had been in days of yore?

She had refused to see him again before the battle, that she might not
divert his thoughts from the great task approaching. But now, as she
beheld him, clad in glittering armour like the god of war himself, ride
before the troops on his fiery Barbary charger, greeting them with the
gay salutation whose warmth sprung from the heart and which had so often
kindled the warriors to glowing enthusiasm, she was forced to do violence
to her own feelings to avoid calling him and saying that her thoughts
would follow his course. But she refrained, and when his purple cloak
vanished from her sight her head drooped again. How different in former
days were the cheers of the troops when he showed himself to them! This
lukewarm response to his gay, glad greeting was no omen of victory.

CHAPTER XXII.

Dion, too, witnessed the departure of the troops. Gorgias, whom he had
found among the Ephebi, accompanied him and, like the Queen, they saw, in
the cautious manner with which the army greeted the general, a bad omen
for the result of the battle. The architect had presented Dion to the
youths as the ghost of a dead man, who, as soon as he was asked whence he
came or whither he was going, would be compelled to vanish in the form of
a fly. He could venture to do this; he knew the Ephebi--there was no
traitor in their ranks.

Dion, the former head of the society, had been welcomed like a beloved
brother risen from the dead, and he had the gratification, after so long
a time, of turning the scale as speaker in a debate. True, he had
encountered very little opposition, for the resolve to hold aloof from
the battle against the Romans had been urged upon the Ephebi by the Queen
herself through Antyllus, who, however, had already left the meeting when
Dion joined it. It had seemed to Cleopatra a crime to claim the blood of
the noblest sons of the city for a cause which she herself deemed lost.
She knew the parents of many, and feared that Octavianus would