[Illustration] When Queen Elizabeth visited the Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham pledged her health in a cup of wine containing a precious stone crushed to atoms, and worth £15,000. Here £15,000 at one clap goes Instead of sugar; Gresham drinks the pearl Unto his queen and mistress. Pledge it; love it!--Th. Heywood, _If You Know not Me. You Know Nobody_. _Cleopatra in Hades_. Cleopatra, says Rabelais, is "a crier of onions" in the shades below. The Latin for a pearl and onion is _unio_, and the pun refers to Cleopatra giving her _pearl_ (or _onion_) to Antony in a draught of wine, or, as some say, drinking it herself in toasting her lover.--Rabelais, _Pantagruel_, ii. 30 (1553). _Cleopat'ra_, Queen of Syria, daughter of Ptolemy Philome'ter, King of Egypt. She first married Alexander Bala, the usurper (B.C. 149); next Deme'trius Nica'nor. Demetrius, being taken prisoner by the Parthians, married Rodogune (3 _syl_.), daughter of Phraa'tes (3 _syl_.) the Parthian king, and Cleopatra married Antiochus Sidetês, brother of Demetrius. She slew her son Seleucus (by Demetrius) for treason, and as this produced a revolt, abdicated in favor of her second son, Anti'ochus VIII., who compelled her to drink poison which she had prepared for himself. P. Corneille has made this the subject of his tragedy called _Rodogune_ (1646). [Illustration] This is not the Cleopatra of Shakespeare's and Dryden's tragedies. _Cleopatra_. In his _Graffiti d'Italia_, William Wetmore Story gives a passionate soliloquy of the Egyptian Queen, beginning:-- "Here, Charmian, take my bracelets; They bar with a purple stain My arms." (1868). CLERE'MONT (2 _syl_.), a merry gentleman, the friend of Dinant'.--"Beaumont and Fletcher" _The Little French Lawyer_ (1547). CLER'IMOND, niece of the Green Knight, sister of Fer'ragus the giant, and bride of Valentine the brave.--_Valentine and Orson_. CLERKS _(St. Nicholas's)_, thieves, also called "St. Nicholas's Clergymen," in allusion to the tradition of "St. Nicholas and the thieves." Probably a play on the words _Nich-olas_ and _Old Nick_ may be designed.--See Shakespeare, 1 _Henry IV_. act ii. sc. 1 (1597).