ed. Most of them were personally known to Cleopatra who, to their
mutual pleasure and advantage, had measured her intellectual powers with
the most brilliant minds of their body.

The sun had already set, when a procession of the priests of Serapis,
the chief god of the city, whose coming had been announced the day
before, appeared at Lochias. Accompanied by torch and lantern bearers,
it moved forward with slow and solemn majesty. In harmony with the
nature of Serapis, there were many reminders of death.

The meaning of every image, every standard, every shrine, every
peculiarity of the music and singing, was familiar to the Queen. Even
the changing colours of the lights referred to the course of growth and
decay in the universe and in human life, and the magnificent close of
the chant of homage which represented the reception of the royal soul
into the essence of the deity, the apotheosis of the sovereign, was well
suited to stir the heart; for a sea of light unexpectedly flooded the
whole procession and, while its glow irradiated the huge pile of the
palace, the sea with its forest of ships and masts, and the shore with
its temples, pylons, obelisks, and superb buildings, all the choruses,
accompanied by the music of sackbuts, cymbals, and lutes, blended in
a mighty hymn, whose waves of sound rose to the star-strewn sky and
reached the open sea beyond the Pharos.

Many a symbolical image suggested death and the resurrection, defeat and
a victory following it by the aid of great Serapis; and when the torches
retired, vanishing in the darkness, with the last, notes of the chanting
of the priests, Cleopatra, raised her head, feeling as if the vow she
had made during the gloomy singing of the aged men and the extinguishing
of the torches had received the approval of the deity brought by her
forefathers to Alexandria and enthroned there to unite in his own person
the nature of the Greek and the Egyptian gods.

Her tomb was to be built and, if destiny was fulfilled, to receive her
lover and herself. She had perceived from Antony's bitter words, as well
as the looks and tones of Lucilius, that he, as well as the man to whom
her heart still clung with indissoluble bonds, held her responsible for
Actium and the fall of his greatness.

The world, she knew, would imitate them, but it should learn that if
love had robbed the greatest man of his day of fame and sovereignty,
that love had been worthy of the highest price.

Th