It was a scene of horribly exciting interest—a scene on which a spectator feels that it is terror to gaze; yet feels that, for his life, he cannot avert his eyes until the agony is over: a scene from which—so strangely were terror and compassion mingled and interwoven with curiosity—no human being could withdraw himself, till he had looked upon the end.
The pale, haughty features of the senseless clay which had wielded and weaponed, a few short hours ago, the energies of a gigantic soul—the deeply seated despair of the silent mourner, still full of life and sensation, but forgetful of herself in the contemplation of her lost idol, unconscious of physical pain in the abstraction of mental agony—the wretched girls repenting their rashness, yet repressing their own anguish lest they should augment hers for whom they had cast life away; and for whom—could it now have been redeemed—they would but have cast it away once again: the stillness of that gorgeous room, the hated reptiles crawling and hissing among the beautiful fruits, the sunshine without and the gloom within, all uniting to make up a picture so awful, yet so exciting, as no poet’s pen or painter’s pencil ever yet created.
It was a scene, however, rapidly drawing to its conclusion: the girl on whose system the venom of the aspic had taken the strongest effect, had already fallen upon the floor; and it seemed, by the long and gasping efforts with which she caught her breath, that her very minutes were numbered. Notwithstanding the miserable plight in which she rolled over and over in her great agony, so callous had the feelings of her companions been rendered by the immediate pressure of their own calamities, that—delicate and tender beings as they were, with hearts ever melting at the slightest indication of sorrow—each one retained her station, wholly absorbed by her own awful thoughts, and careless of all besides.
It was at this crisis, that a shrill and prolonged flourish of trumpets rose—almost painfully—upon the ear. It was a Roman trumpet. There was a pause—a brief, but awful pause; such as is often felt between the first peal of a thunder-storm and the bursting deluge of the shower. Again it rang—nearer, and nearer yet; and now, beneath the very windows of the mausoleum.
As the first note sank into silence, the queen had arisen breathlessly to her feet; and there she stood, motionless as a statue, her eyes still fixed on Antony; but her lips slightly severed, her head and her whole frame expressing the earnestness with which she listened for a repetition of the sounds; but, as the second flourish smote her ear, she threw her arm aloft in triumph, a flash of exultation kindled that glorious brow like a sunburst, and her eyes danced in their sockets with the highly-wrought ecstasy of the moment; but, while her brow and eyes were radiant with delight, the wide expansion of the nostril and the curl of the chiseled lip spoke volumes of defiance and contempt.
“It is too late,” she cried, in accents still clear and musical, though strained far above the natural pitch of her voice. “It is too late, ye Roman robbers. He whom your sacrilegious trumpets would have but now aroused to vengeance, from the lightning of whose eye ye would have fled like howling wolves before the bolt of Jove, whose voice would have stunned you like the thunders of the Omnipotent—the conqueror of the universe has fallen asleep, nor can your senseless clangors waken him to vengeance.”
Even, as she spoke, the rattle of the ladders, by which the legionaries of the victor were scaling the porticoes of that fortress tomb, the shouts of the rude veterans, and the clash of their brazen harness were distinctly audible; and, ere her words were ended, the same wild sounds were heard echoing along the vaulted passages and spacious halls of the story next beneath. Another moment, and their steps were heard mounting the long sloping passages which, in Egyptian architecture, supplied the want of stairs, affording access to the upper chambers. The door, formed like the walls of the apartment, of polished alabaster, and invisible when closed, was evidently forced; and a group of men, whose Italian complexions and features, prominent and strongly marked, denoted them to be the victors of the world, the iron men of Rome—stood on the threshold. All sheathed in complete armor: not decked, like that of the soft Orientals, with gold and precious stones, but of bronze so brightly polished that it reflected every object; perfect in the accuracy with which it was adapted to their frames, in the facility of motion it left to all their limbs, and in its exquisite finish; with crested casques and crimson tunics, it would have been impossible to conceive more martial figures.
Foremost of all, the conqueror of Actium entered the arena of his triumph; and, in truth, although he could not have sustained a moment’s comparison with his more fortunate rival, he looked—at least, if he were not—the hero. No flush of exultation tinged his complexion, no insolence of victory sparkled in his eye; but, not the less did exultation, insolence, and cruelty live within his breast, although he was sufficiently versed in dissimulation to conceal his odious character beneath a vail of stoical philosophy and magnanimous indifference.
“Hail, emperor!” cried the dying sovereign, confronting him with a demeanor a thousand times more lofty than his own. “Hail, conqueror!”—her countenance alone would have expressed the scorn she felt, had not her tones been such that the cold-blooded despot writhed beneath them.
“Comest thou hither, puissant lord, noble successor of the mighty Julius, comest thou hither to violate the ashes of the dead, or to prove thy virgin valor on a woman? Macte tuâ virtute! On, in thy valor and thy glory! Why—the dead Cæsar was to thee as Omphale to Hercules! We are no Amazon to dare thy valor, O, thou second Thesius! Out with thy broad-sword, Cæsar, the august!—and see who first will shrink from it—I, or my dead, yonder?”