Yours was my country — a gift from the emperors of Rome; and the giving away of other people's lands is an old practice. And you spoke the tongue of my country, and upon your lips turned words that we utter still, recovering a fragrance.

And you visited my country: woe to you — what took your fancy in that Herod, that you set about tempting him, so that he set about seeking your destruction?.. Piety and devoutness — of these that Jew was kneaded; did you not see him, a generation and part of a generation later, slaughtering the infants of Bethlehem? Piety and devoutness: he sought to blot out beauty, and after that, the Maker of beauty... What took your fancy in him, Cleopatra?

The adversary of your beloved, and your own adversary: Octavian the harsh. And the sea whose waves bore the report of your enchantment to the East and the North did not reach to Spain, where Octavian was; so he paid no heed to beauty, and the tidings of your conquests did not leave the gleaming lances of his conquests to rust. Caesar and Antony came and saw, and were conquered; Octavian did not come and did not see, and was not conquered... Blessed is he who believed without seeing — and blessed is he who loved without seeing.

But he came at last, and saw you... and was not con-quered. He was not conquered, and he did not triumph:

for you did not fight. And why should you fight, when the wars of your love aimed at an end that this adversary of yours, conquering or conquered, would never grant? Is this love, Cleopatra — a crown, a throne, and a son to inherit the kingdom of the earth? Where are your first lessons? Where is your giant, and the vault?

A love without pain. No misery and no anguish:

neither party envies, neither burns with jealousy, nei-ther crouches in a corner sobbing over the other's betrayal — a love of inter-est, betrayed by both. Is this love, Cleopatra? Is the body's summons enough, and the body's offering?

And that body, Cleopatra, which you offered — alas for it: it would, says Shakespeare through one of your beloved's men, make hungry where it satisfied. It killed where it gave life, and pressed out poison where it poured nectar.

An asp, Cleopatra? Is this the ending, while the earth still holds horizons you have not toyed with? An asp — and at your breast? It writhes, it writhes...