At a distance from the miserable mistress sat a group of women, attired, as has been said, most gorgeously, but their sad and clouded aspects offered a fearful contrast to their sumptuous garments; near them, and on a table of the richest porphyry, negligently strewn with instruments of music, the Grecian lute, the wild Egyptian systrum, and the Italian pipe, with jeweled tiaras, perfumes, cosmetics, and all the luxuries of a regal toilet, pateræ of solid emerald, drinking-cups of agate, vases and flasks of crystal, there stood a plain, country-looking basket, woven of the slender reeds that grow beside the lake of Mœris, filled with the dark, glossy leaves and purple fruits of the fig-tree. To a casual glance it might have seemed that there was nothing in the contents of the basket beyond the casual offering of some simple rustic’s gratitude to his queen; but on a nearer view, there might be seen upon the foliage long, slimy trails, twining hither and thither, as if left by the passage of some loathsome reptile. At times, too, there was a slight, rustling sound, a motion of the leaves, not waving regularly as if shaken by the breeze, but heaving up at intervals from the life-like motions of something beneath; and now a scaly back, a small, black head, with eyes glowing like sparks of fire, and an arrowy tongue quivering and darting about like a lambent flame—it was the deadly aspic of the Nile, the most fatal, the most desperately venomous of all the serpents of Africa. Deeply, fearfully skilled, in all the dark secrets of poisoning and incantation, the wife and sister of the Ptolemies had chosen this abhorred way of avenging upon herself the wrongs of Antony; of baffling the cool malignance of the little-minded man whom Rome’s adulation had even then began to style the August; of freeing herself from the chains, not emblematic, of Roman servitude; from the humiliation of being led along in gliding fetters behind the chariot wheels of the perpetual consul; from the dungeon, the scaffold, the rod, and the axe, which closed alike the triumph of the victor and the misery of the vanquished. Already had the news been conveyed to her—the stunning news that, save in name, she was no more a queen—but the rumor had fallen on a deaf or unregarding ear.