"I am Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and I would speak with thee alone."
She paused; then raising one jeweled arm motions to Appolidorus that he shall withdraw. With a similar motion, the man at the desk signifies the same to his astonished secretary.
Appolidorus went down the long hallway, down the stone steps and waited at the outer gate amid the throng of soldiers. They questioned him, gibed him, railed at him, but they got no word in reply.
He waited—he waited an hour, two—and then came a messenger with a note written on a slip of parchment. The words ran thus: "Well-beloved 'Dorus: Veni, vidi, vici! Go fetch my maids, also all of our personal belongings."
Standing alone by the slashed and stiffened corpse of Julius Cæsar, Mark Antony says:
"Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times."
Cæsar had two qualities that mark the man of supreme power: he was gentle and he was firm.
To be gentle, generous, lenient, forgiving, and yet never relinquish the vital thing—this is to be great.