Cleopatra recovered immediately!
"If it were necessary," she whispered, still trembling, and pressing his head against her bosom, "I should be the first to urge you to go. I desire your well-being, your glory far more than you do. But, believe me, your wife and your brother are fools. They are working only for their own interest. Let them get out of this embarrassment, which they have brought about themselves, without any aid from you."
Antony was more than content to believe her. And that night there was no further question of their parting.
Other happy nights followed. The lovers were reunited, and behind those protecting ramparts that love builds they were oblivious of war, threats, everything. What matter if the world fell, so long as they were together?
The gods, however, who favoured Antony, combined this time to save him. At the moment when Perugia, exhausted, was on the point of surrendering; when the army, headed by his brother and his wife, seeing no chance of the Triumvir's coming, began to lose courage, Fulvia suddenly fell ill and died. She had been the soul of the resisting army. With this support gone Lucius was not strong enough to continue the fight against such heavy odds, and he sheathed his sword. Thus, by unforeseen events, Antony's absence, which had seemed so fatal, brought most excellent results. He had taken no part in the war and so could not be held responsible for it. Consequently there would be no difficulty in making peace with Octavius. He had only to disavow any political designs of his own. But he must at least go to negotiate this affair in person.
With Fulvia dead there was no further reason for Cleopatra to oppose Antony's temporary absence, or to feel any alarm in regard to it. She had borne him one child and another was coming. They had decided to celebrate their wedding in the spring and to legitimatize the children, as Cæsar had done in the case of Cæsarion. As though, however, the growlings of the crafty beast that lurks near perfect happiness were heard from afar, Cleopatra still had certain apprehensions. What did she dread? She could not have defined it. The idea of consulting the oracles came to her. Perhaps they would explain that mysterious danger against which her whole being rebelled.
Here, as at Rome, the long-bearded augurs sought to unravel the secrets of the future by studying the sacred books, observing the flight of birds and examining the entrails of the victims. As Claros, Curnes, and Tibur had their sybils, Delphi her Pythian priestess, so Alexandria had a college of celebrated astrologers. These famous men not only gave their nights to the study of the heavens (they knew the laws that governed the stars and they gave the constellations the names that they bear to-day) but their science pretended to be able to question these stars and to obtain information from them. Each celestial body represented a divinity who influenced the birth and life of mortals, and its vivid brilliancy in the height of happiness was dimmed by the approach of disaster.
After nightfall, when it was entirely dark, Cleopatra, accompanied by a slave, climbed the one hundred and twenty steps which led to the highest terrace.
Sisogenus, the great compiler of horoscopes, who had been advised of her visit, was awaiting her. With outstretched arms and his forehead in the dust he saluted her three times.
"What does the daughter of Amoun-Ra seek of an insignificant being?"