“It is too late,” she cried, in accents still clear and musical, though strained far above the natural pitch of her voice. “It is too late, ye Roman robbers. He whom your sacrilegious trumpets would have but now aroused to vengeance, from the lightning of whose eye ye would have fled like howling wolves before the bolt of Jove, whose voice would have stunned you like the thunders of the Omnipotent—the conqueror of the universe has fallen asleep, nor can your senseless clangors waken him to vengeance.” Even, as she spoke, the rattle of the ladders, by which the legionaries of the victor were scaling the porticoes of that fortress tomb, the shouts of the rude veterans, and the clash of their brazen harness were distinctly audible; and, ere her words were ended, the same wild sounds were heard echoing along the vaulted passages and spacious halls of the story next beneath. Another moment, and their steps were heard mounting the long sloping passages which, in Egyptian architecture, supplied the want of stairs, affording access to the upper chambers. The door, formed like the walls of the apartment, of polished alabaster, and invisible when closed, was evidently forced; and a group of men, whose Italian complexions and features, prominent and strongly marked, denoted them to be the victors of the world, the iron men of Rome—stood on the threshold. All sheathed in complete armor: not decked, like that of the soft Orientals, with gold and precious stones, but of bronze so brightly polished that it reflected every object; perfect in the accuracy with which it was adapted to their frames, in the facility of motion it left to all their limbs, and in its exquisite finish; with crested casques and crimson tunics, it would have been impossible to conceive more martial figures. Foremost of all, the conqueror of Actium entered the arena of his triumph; and, in truth, although he could not have sustained a moment’s comparison with his more fortunate rival, he looked—at least, if he were not—the hero. No flush of exultation tinged his complexion, no insolence of victory sparkled in his eye; but, not the less did exultation, insolence, and cruelty live within his breast, although he was sufficiently versed in dissimulation to conceal his odious character beneath a vail of stoical philosophy and magnanimous indifference. “Hail, emperor!” cried the dying sovereign, confronting him with a demeanor a thousand times more lofty than his own. “Hail, conqueror!”—her countenance alone would have expressed the scorn she felt, had not her tones been such that the cold-blooded despot writhed beneath them.