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the worst he
had to fear, and in truth he had but little fear of such things.
    He swam close under the walls of the palace, which bathed its marble
feet in the river's depths, and paused an instant before a submerged
archway into which the water rushed downward in eddying whirls. Twice,
thrice he plunged into the vortex unsuccessfully. At last, with better
luck, he found the opening and disappeared.
    This archway was the opening to a vaulted canal which conducted the
waters of the Nile into the baths of Cleopatra.
Chapter V
    Cleopatra found no rest until morning, at the hour when wandering dreams
reenter the Ivory Gate. Amid the illusions of sleep she beheld all kinds
of lovers swimming rivers and scaling walls in order to come to her,
and, through the vague souvenirs of the night before, her dreams
appeared fairly riddled with arrows bearing declarations of love.
Starting nervously from time to time in her troubled slumbers, she
struck her little feet unconsciously against the bosom of Charmion, who
lay across the foot of the bed to serve her as a cushion.
    When she awoke, a merry sunbeam was playing through the window curtain,
whose woof it penetrated with a thousand tiny points of light, and
thence came familiarly to the bed, flitting like a golden butterfly over
her lovely shoulders, which it lightly touched in passing by with a
luminous kiss. Happy sunbeam, which the gods might well have envied.
    In a faint voice, like that of a sick child, Cleopatra asked to be
lifted out of bed. Two of her women raised her in their arms and gently
laid her on a tiger-skin stretched upon the floor, of which the eyes
were formed of carbuncles and the claws of gold. Charmion wrapped her in
calasiris
of linen whiter than milk, confined her hair in a net of
woven silver threads, tied to her little feet cork
tatbebs
upon the
soles of which were painted, in token of contempt, two grotesque
figures, representing two men of the races of Nahasi and Nahmou, bound
hand and foot, so that Cleopatra literally deserved the epithet,
"Conculcatrix of Nations,"
[2]
which the royal cartouche inscriptions
bestow upon her.
    It was the hour for the bath. Cleopatra went to bathe, accompanied by
her women.
    The baths of Cleopatra were built in the midst of immense gardens filled
with mimosas, aloes, carob-trees, citron-trees, and Persian apple-trees,
whose luxuriant freshness afforded a delicious contrast to the arid
appearance of the neighboring vegetation. There, too, vast terraces
uplifted masses of verdant foliage, and enabled flowers to climb almost
to the very sky upon gigantic stairways of rose-colored granite; vases
of Pentelic marble bloomed at the end of each step like huge
lily-flowers, and the plants they contained seemed only their pistils;
chimeras caressed into form by the chisels of the most skilful Greek
sculptors, and less stern of aspect than the Egyptian sphinxes, with
their grim mien and moody attitudes, softly extended their limbs upon
the flower-strewn turf, like shapely white leverettes upon a
drawing-room carpet. These were charming feminine figures, with finely
chiselled nostrils, smooth brows, small mouths, delicately dimpled arms,
breasts fair-rounded and daintily formed; wearing earrings, necklaces,
and all the trinkets suggested by adorable caprice; whose bodies
terminated in bifurcated fishes' tails, like the women described by
Horace, or extended into birds' wings, or rounded into lions' haunches,
or blended into volutes of foliage, according to the fancies of the
artist or in conformity to the architectural position chosen. A double
row of these delightful monsters lined the alley which led from the
palace to the bathing halls.
    At the end of this alley was a huge fountain-basin, approached by four
porphyry stairways. Through the transparent depths of the diamond-clear
water the steps could be seen descending to the bottom of the basin,
which was strewn with gold-dust in lieu of sand. Here figures of women
terminating in