Towards the end of the repast, humpbacked dwarfs and morions executed grotesque dances and combats; the young Egyptian and Grecian girls, representing the black and the white hours, danced in the Ionian mode, a voluptuous dance performed with inimitable perfection.

Cleopatra herself rose from her throne, flung down her royal mantle, replaced her sidereal diadem by a garland of flowers, adjusted her golden castanets to her alabaster hands, and began to dance before Meïamoun, lost in ravishment. Her lovely arms, rounded like the handles of a marble vase, shook down above her head clusters of twinkling notes, and her castanets prattled with an ever-growing volubility. Raised on the vermilion tips of her little feet, she advanced quickly and came to brush the brow of Meïamoun with a kiss; then she recommenced her manœuvres and flitted round him, sometimes curving backwards, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, her arms swooning and dead, her hair unbound and hanging like a bacchante’s on Mount Mænalus swayed by her god; sometimes gay, alert, laughing, fluttering, tireless, and more capricious in her meanders than a pillaging bee. The love of the heart, the voluptuousness of the senses, ardent passion, inexhaustible fresh youth, the promise of approaching felicity, she expressed them all.

The shamefast stars looked no longer, their chaste golden eyeballs could not bear such a sight; the sky itself was hid, and a dome of inflamed mist covered the hall.

Cleopatra returned to seat herself near Meïamoun. The night wore on; the last of the black hours was about to fly away; the sky itself was hid; a bluish glimmer entered with perplexed step among this tumult of red lights, like a moonbeam that falls on a furnace: the high arcades grew softly blue; day was appearing.

Meïamoun took the horn vase that an Ethiopian slave of sinister aspect presented to him, a vase which contained a poison so potent that it would have shattered any other vessel. Throwing his life to his mistress in a last look, he carried to his lips the fatal cup where the poisoned liquor boiled and hissed.

Cleopatra grew pale, and put her hand on Meïamoun’s arm to stay him. His courage touched her; she was going to say, ‘Live on to love me; I desire it—’, when the blast of bugles was heard. Four heralds at arms entered on horseback into the banqueting-hall. It was Mark Antony’s officers who preceded their master by a few steps. Silently she dropped Meïamoun’s arm. A sunbeam came to play on Cleopatra’s forehead as if to replace her absent diadem.

‘You see that the moment has come; it is the hour when lovely dreams fly away,’ said Meïamoun.

Then he drank at a single draught the fatal vase and fell as if struck by lightning. Cleopatra bent her head, and in the cup a burning tear, the only one she had shed in her life, went to join the melted pearl.

‘By Hercules! my lovely queen, it was no use my making haste, I see that I have come too late,’ said Mark Antony, as he entered the banqueting-hall: ‘the supper is finished. But what is the meaning of this body lying on the flag-stones?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Cleopatra, smiling. ‘It’s a poison I was experimenting with to be ready for myself if Octavius took me a prisoner. Would it amuse you, my dear lord, to sit beside me and watch these Greek buffoons dance?’