Without waking the woman who watched over her slumbers, she softly put her feet to the ground, slipped her golden bangles round her ankles, girded her little brown belly with a row of enormous pearls, and thus accoutred, left her chamber.
In the monumental corridor, armed guards were also sound asleep, except one who stood sentinel at the door of the Queen’s room.
He fell on his knees and whispered in dire terror, as if he had never before found himself thus struggling in such a conflict of duty and danger:
“Princess Cleopatra, I crave thy pardon! I cannot let thee pass!”
The lass drew herself up to her full height, knitted her brows violently, and dealt a dull blow on the soldier’s forehead with her clenched fist.
“As for thee,” she said in smothered accents, but with ferocious meaning, “I’ll raise a cry of rape, and have thee quartered!”
Then, in silence, she entered the Queens chamber.
Berenice was asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, her hand hanging down.
Over the great crimson couch, a hanging lamp mingled its feeble glare with that of the moon, reflected by the whiteness of the walls. The vague, luminous outlines of the slumbering woman’s supple nudity were thus enwrapped in misty shadow, between these two contrasting lights.