The torch's reflection lights up the cup.
"It is not possible! Gold! yes, all gold!"
He finds another piece, larger than the first, at the bottom, and, underneath that many others.
"Why, here's a sum large enough to buy three cows—a little field!"
The cup is now filled with gold pieces.
"Come, then! a hundred slaves, soldiers, a heap wherewith to buy——"
Here the granulations of the cup's rim, detaching themselves, form a pearl necklace.
"With this jewel here, one might even win the Emperor's wife!"
With a shake Antony makes the necklace slip over his wrist. He holds the cup in his left hand, and with his right arm raises the torch to shed more light upon it. Like water trickling down from a basin, it pours itself out in continuous waves, so as to make a hillock on the sand—diamonds, carbuncles, and sapphires mingled with huge pieces of gold bearing the effigies of kings.
"What? What? Staters, shekels, darics, aryandics! Alexander, Demetrius, the Ptolemies, Cæsar! But each of them had not as much! Nothing impossible in it! More to come! And those rays which dazzle me! Ah! my heart overflows! How good this is! Yes! ... Yes! ... more! Never enough! It did not matter even if I kept flinging it into the sea; more would remain. Why lose any of it? I will keep it all, without telling anyone about it. I will dig myself a chamber in the rock, the interior of which will be lined with strips of bronze; and thither will I come to feel the piles of gold sinking under my heels. I will plunge my arms into it as if into sacks of corn. I would like to anoint my face with it—to sleep on top of it!"