The morning after the battle of Philippi, before he had set foot on the soil of that Orient which was to be his triumph and his undoing, Antony was well balanced. Though his senses were exultant, his mind was filled with mighty projects. As he left that wild Macedonian country, where victory had been gained only after cruel sacrifices, the memory of whose bitter cold still made him shiver, he dreamed of those sunny southern lands, with their warmth and abundance, which his valour had won. Which one should he visit first? Each had its own attraction, each shore held some new charm. On the other side of Ossa and Pelion, whose snow-capped summits shut him in, lay the fascination and culture of Greece; beyond that, the coast of Asia, crowded with cities, each richer and more famous than the other: Smyrna, Ephesus, Pergamus; then Syria, with her palm trees, her gardens filled with luscious fruits; Lebanon, the stopping-place of the caravans from the Far East, laden with silks and precious stones. Then Palestine, arid beneath her gray olive trees, but crowned by holy Jerusalem, that sacred shrine calling a perpetual pilgrimage of Jews from the four corners of the earth; and above all, Egypt, Egypt fragrant with incense and violets, the kingdom of the incomparable Cleopatra! Ever since the catastrophe of the Ides of March had so abruptly separated them, Antony had dreamed of the beautiful Queen. Often, in the heat of battle, or during the dreary watches in his tent at night, he had conjured up her fair image. Sometimes he saw again that indefinable look with which, when quite sure that she was unobserved, the mistress of Cæsar had returned his passionate regard. Tender and enticing, her glance, which stole toward him from between her long, dark lashes, seemed to demand his adoration. So vivid had been his sensations that at moments he was thrilled by the memory. The unspoken words of those evenings at the Transtevera would come back to him and, with the hunger of unsatisfied desire, he went over those scenes again and again. Unceasingly he repeated to himself the comforting thought that what had been impossible to him in the lifetime of Cæsar, he was no longer barred from taking. Cleopatra was free, and he, in his turn, had become one of the pillars of the world, a man whom any woman, even were she a queen, would be proud to call her lord. Above all, he had that magic gift of youth, to which all things are possible, and that ever-buoyant hope which, dreaming of the fairest fortune that the future may hold, whispers: "Why should not this be mine?"