Another scene follows the death of Antony. When the ceremonies of interment were finished, Cleopatra allowed herself to be led to the palace of her ancestors. Exhausted with fever by the vehemence of her passionate mourning, she refused the care of her physician, and declared that she would perish by hunger. Octavius [the conqueror of Antony] was alarmed at the avowal of this desperate resolution. He could only prevail upon her to protract her existence by the barbarous threat of murdering her children. He held out also the hope of a personal interview, and again her vanity whispered to her not yet to despair. The artless charms of youth which, as she at least deemed, had enchained the great Julius at a single interview, had long since passed away; the more mature attractions which experience had taught her to cultivate for the conquest of her second lover, might fail under the disastrous ravages of so many years of indulgence and dissipation; but time had not blighted her genius; her distresses claimed compassion; and from pity, she well knew, there is but one step to love. In the retirement of the women's apartments she decked her chamber with sumptuous magnificence, and threw herself on a silken couch in the negligent attire of sickness and woe. She clasped to her bosom the letters of her earliest admirer, and surrounded herself with his busts and portraits, to make an impression on the filial piety of one who claimed to inherit his conquests and sympathise with his dearest interests. When the expected visitor entered, she sprang passionately to meet him, and threw herself at his feet; her eyes were red with weeping, her whole countenance was disordered, her bosom heaved, and her voice trembled with emotion. The marks of blows inflicted on her breast were visible in the disorder of her clothing. She addressed him as her lord, and sighed as she transferred to a stranger the sovereign title she had so long borne herself, and which she had first received from her conqueror's father.