In Camp near Actium, later.—Cleopatra has arrived. She is used to camp life and does not mind roughing it. Everybody advises me to fight on land and not by sea, but Cleopatra and myself think we ought to fight by sea. Cæsar has taken Toryne. We have sixty sail. The thing is obvious; but soldiers are always prejudiced. Enobarbus worrying me to death to fight on land.
Cleopatra won't hear of it, and I am quite certain she is right. A woman's instinct in matters of strategy and tactics are infallible; and then—what a woman!
Alexandria, later.—Very glad to be home again. Cleopatra was perfectly right to retreat. Played billiards. Gave Cleopatra 25. She beat me. She will soon be able to give me something. She is a surprising woman. Last night the Greek envoy dined. Too clever for me, but Cleopatra floored him over Anaxagoras. Wonderful woman! She sang, or rather hummed, in the evening a little Greek song, the burden of which is
Ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
I cannot get the tune out of my head.
[XVI]
FROM THE DIARY OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE
Moscow, September 1, 1560.—I drove to the village of O——, 24 versts. On one side of the river is the village, with its church, on the other a lonely windmill. The landscape flat and brown, the nearer houses and the distant trees sharp in the clear autumn air. The windmill is maimed; it has lost one of its wings. It is like my soul. My soul is a broken windmill which is rusty, stiff, and maimed; it groans and creaks before the winds of God, but it no longer turns; and no longer, cheerfully grumbling as of yore, it performs its daily task and grinds the useful corn. The only spots of colour in the landscape were the blue cupolas of the church; a blue and red shirt hanging up to dry on an apple-tree near a wooden hut, and the kerchiefs of the women who were washing linen in the river. A soldier talked to the women, and laughed with them. I would that I could laugh like that with men and women. I can only laugh alone and bitterly. I had never been there before. But when lazily, a cock crew, and a little boy made music on a wooden pipe, and a long cart laden with sacks creaked by, the driver walking by its side, I knew that I had seen all this before, not something like unto it, but this very thing, that same windmill, that same creaking cart, that same little boy playing that very tune on that very pipe.
It was a mournful tune, and it said to my soul, "Why art thou so dusty and rusty, O my soul, why art thou sorrowful? Crusted with suspicion; uneasy and fearful, prompt to wrath and slow to trust, inhospitable towards hope, and a stranger to gladness?"