old gaze with
modest entreaty, flashed angrily, and a majestic: "Let the past rest!"
interrupted him.

But she soon mastered the indignation which had stirred her passionate
blood, and in a totally different tone, not wholly free from gentle
persuasion, she continued:

"The provident intellect of the man whose nod the universe obeys grasps
the future as well as the present. Must not he, therefore, have decided
the children's fate ere he consented to see their mother? The only
obstacle in your path, the son of your great uncle--"

"His doom was a necessity," interrupted the conqueror in a tone of
sincere regret. "As I mourned Antony, I grieve for the unfortunate boy."

"If that is true," replied Cleopatra eagerly, "it does honour to the
kindness of your heart. When Proculejus wrested the dagger from my grasp
he blamed me because I attributed to the most clement of conquerors
harshness and implacability."

"Two qualities," the Caesar protested, "which are wholly alien to my
nature."

"And which--even if you possessed them--you neither could nor ought to
use," cried Cleopatra, "if you really mean the beautiful words you so
often utter that, as the nephew and heir of the great Julius Caesar, you
intend to walk in his footsteps. Caesarion--there is his bust--was the
image in every feature of his father, your illustrious model. To me, the
hapless woman now awaiting my sentence from his nephew's lips, the gods
granted, as the most precious of all gifts, the love of your divine
uncle. And what love! The world knew not what I was to his great heart,
but my wish to defend myself from misconception bids me show it to you,
his heir. From you I expect my sentence. You are the judge. These letters
are my strongest defence. I rely upon them to show myself to you as I was
and am, not as envy and slander describe me.--The little ivory casket,
Iras! It contains the precious proofs of Caesar's love, his letters to
me."

She raised the lid with trembling hands and, as these mementoes carried
her back to the past, she continued in lower tones:

"Among all my treasures this simple little coffer has been for half a
lifetime my most valued jewel. He gave it to me. It was in the midst of
the fierce contest here at the Bruchium."

Then, while unfolding the first roll, she directed Octavianus's attention
to it and the remainder of the contents of the little casket, exclaiming:

"Silent pages, yet how eloquent! Each one a peerless pict