Four galloping horses were speeding him along the Royal Way. The pink façade of the Bruchium rose above its terraces. He was getting nearer, nearer; in another instant he would be face to face with Cleopatra.
"Will she be mine at last?" he asked himself, breathlessly. She had sworn it and it was on this understanding that they had parted. But with women, with this woman especially, with her subtle, sinuous ways, one could never tell. The uncertainty made his heart beat fast. The horses galloped steadily on, made the last slope, and Antony was at the door of the palace.
Above, on the first step, surrounded by white-mitred priests swinging censers, and by officers in rich array, Cleopatra was awaiting him. She evidently wished to remind him of the days at Tarsus, for she was draped in a sea-green robe which made her look like a nereid. Necklaces of pale green chalcedony fell over her bosom like ocean spray, and on the turquoise clasp of her belt mysterious symbols were engraved.
As Antony approached she cast a laurel branch toward him and came down to greet him. On bended knees, with outstretched arms, he saluted her with a gesture of adoration. They grasped each other's hands and spoke for a moment in low tones. Then they went up the steps of the grand stairway together in silence. They were smiling, and their expression was that of perfect, exquisite understanding.
From that day serene happiness encompassed them. The calculations, the coquetry, vanished. There was no further anxiety save that which comes to those accustomed to a life of pleasure, when they ask themselves: "Will it last, shall I still be happy to-morrow?" This was real, absolute, supreme love. Many people, resenting the glamour of romance, have not seen, have not wished to see in this famous adventure anything but a selfish scheme, and in Cleopatra an ambitious courtesan. It is true that the persecutions of her youth had caused her to look on love as a means, had made her regard Cæsar as a protector from whom she could expect, primarily, the restoration of her kingdom, and later, if death had not come so suddenly, the crown of an empress. But with Antony it was different. At the outset, perhaps, in her dreary solitude she had certain plans in mind by which she could use him to carry out her ambitious schemes. Bereft of the great ruler by whose power she had built up her fortune, she probably dreamed of replacing him with Antony and continuing with him those bonds that the fatal poignard of Brutus had severed. But she had not reckoned on the hot blood of youth. If that voyage to Tarsus had been a snare Cleopatra was caught in her own trap. She had set out as a conqueror, sure of enforcing her will, and she had found love awaiting her to lead her captive. However attractive Antony's possessions might be, his personal charm outweighed them all. He had in a rare degree those gifts which win affection, and, in spite of all her premeditated schemes and plots, in spite of the endless intrigues which may have been combined with her feeling for him, Cleopatra undoubtedly gave him her whole heart. What is more convincing than the final tragedy? When a love affair ends with the voluntary death of the lovers, when they both kill themselves rather than live on alone, any preceding faults or failings are of small account. That last hour is the only one to be marked on the dial of history.
But at this time there was no thought of death. Day followed day, wholly given over to the joy of living. Every moment spent together created new dreams to be carried out; each desire gratified gave birth to a new desire. They seemed to have within them an inexhaustible spring from which they drank without ever quenching their thirst. The only perfect love is that where flesh and spirit are satisfied in turn, where heart and soul share in the ecstasy. To Cleopatra, who had never loved before, this feeling was a new experience. To Antony it was a surprise which plunged him in unspeakable delight. After his life of excess it would have seemed impossible for him to be thrilled by this new joy. But all other experiences were wiped out, and in this love he was born again. Like to the fire which rises, impervious to corruption, his passion for Cleopatra had burned away all stains of the past.
Their mutual happiness seemed to affect all their environment. The Queen took an exquisite pleasure in pointing out the charms of the Bruchium, that incomparable museum of art and nature. She wanted to share all its wonders with her lover. Even if she picked a rose she wanted him to inhale its fragrance as though it were an ethereal fragment of herself, and its perfume were her own breath. In showing him a marble statue from the chisel of Praxiteles, the bronze Hercules that Ptolemy VII had brought from Corinth, a bas-relief covered with figures from the Iliad; in music, or some page from a Greek drama, she sought that close contact of mind and spirit which should make them one being.
But if Antony yielded at times to the refining influence of the daughter of the Lagidæ, at other moments his own virile nature had the mastery and controlled them both.
The orgies of the Bruchium are matters of history. The moderation of modern life, with its democratic views, its lesser fortunes, its law-restricted vices, gives no hint of the extravagant living of the ancients. The scale is entirely different. There is no comparison between the provincial fêtes of to-day and the saturnalian revelries of the Romans. Our hygienic repasts offer no idea of the gluttonous feasts of Balthazar. Modern monuments, modern buildings, how pitifully poor they are compared with those colossal structures that Rameses or Darius employed thirty years of their reign in completing, and which have survived them for as many centuries! What a contrast between our richest palaces and those massive retreats of ancient kings, with their stupendous ramparts, their avenues of obelisks, the forest of columns which surrounded them! The most magnificent court of Europe would seem paltry set by the side of one of any satrap or Roman proconsul.
The world in those days belonged to the privileged few who had the entire control. The lower classes were content to look on at their revels. There were giants in those days compared with the less virile physique of modern men. The suns which shone on their joys have set. A certain sadness depresses the modern mind, inoculated with the virus of the ideal.