Queen Cleopatra lifted her hand and stood thus for a while. Very
splendid she was, and Smith, on his hands and knees behind the boarding
of the boat, thanked his stars that alone among modern men it had been
his lot to look upon her rich and living loveliness. There she shone,
she who had changed the fortunes of the world, she who, whatever she did
amiss, at least had known how to die.
Silence fell upon that glittering galaxy of kings and queens and upon
all the hundreds of their offspring, their women, and their great
officers who crowded the double tier of galleries around the hall.
"Royalties of Egypt," she began, in a sweet, clear voice which
penetrated to the farthest recesses of the place, "I, Cleopatra, the
sixth of that name and the last monarch who ruled over the Upper and the
Lower Lands before Egypt became a home of slaves, have a word to say
to your Majesties, who, in your mortal days, all of you more worthily
filled the throne on which once I sat. I do not speak of Egypt and its
fate, or of our sins--whereof mine were not the least--that brought her
to the dust. Those sins I and others expiate elsewhere, and of them,
from age to age, we hear enough. But on this one night of the year, that
of the feast of him whom we call Osiris, but whom other nations have
known and know by different names, it is given to us once more to be
mortal for an hour, and, though we be but shadows, to renew the loves
and hates of our long-perished flesh.
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