This again is the reason why Mark Antony did so love Cleopatra and preferred her before his own wife Octavia, who was an hundred times more beautiful and lovable than the Egyptian Queen. But this Cleopatra was mistress of such happy phrases and such witty conversation, with such wanton ways and seductive graces, that Antony did forget all else for love of her. Plutarch doth assure us, speaking of sundry quips and tricks of tongue she was used to make such pretty play withal, that Mark Antony, when he would fain imitate her, was in his bearing (albeit he was only too anxious to play the gallant lover) like naught so much as a common soldier or rough man-at-arms, as compared with her and her brilliant ways of talk.[118*] Pliny doth relate a story of her which I think excellent, and so I will repeat the same here in brief. One day, being in one of her wildest moods, she was attired most enticingly and to great advantage, and especially did wear on her head a garland of divers blossoms most suitable to provoke wanton imaginings. Well, as they sat at table, and Mark Antony was fain to drink, she did amuse him with pleasant discourse, and meanwhile all the time she spake, she kept plucking out one by one fair flowers from her garland (but they were really strewed over every one with poisonous essences), and tossing the same from time to time into the cup Antony held ready to drink from. Presently when she had ended her discourse and Mark Antony was on the point of lifting the goblet to his lips to drink, Cleopatra doth stay him suddenly with her hand, and having stationed some slave or condemned criminal ready to hand, she did call this fellow to her and made them give him the draught Mark Antony was about to swallow. On drinking this he fell down dead; and she turning to Antony, said, “And if I did not love you as I do, I should e’en now have been rid of you; yea! and would gladly have had it so, only that I see plainly I cannot live without you.” These words and this device were well fitted to confirm Mark Antony in his passion, and to make him even more submissive before his charmer’s feet. In such ways did her cleverness of tongue serve Cleopatra, whom all the Historians do describe as having been exceedingly ready of speech. Mark Antony was used never to call her anything but “the Queen,” by way of greater distinction. So he did write to Octavius Cæsar, previous to the time when they were declared open enemies: “What hath changed you,” he writes, “concerning my loving the Queen? She is my wife. Is it but now I have begun the connection? You fondle Drusilla, Tortalé, Leontiphé and a dozen others; what reck you on whom you do bestow your favour, when the caprice seizeth you?”