Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/324

308 The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm

And burgonet of men.—He's speaking now,

Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile ?

For so he calls me ; Now I feed myself

With most delicious poison :—Think on me,

That am with Phœbus' amorous pinches black,

And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar,

When thou wast here above the ground, I was

A morsel for a monarch : and great Pompey

Would stand, and make his eyes grow in my brow;

There would he anchor his aspect, and die

With looking on his life."

If I may boldly speak out all my thought, fearing no slanderous sarcastic smiles, I would say that, candidly confessed, this helter-skelter thought and feeling of Cleopatra—the result of an irregular, idle, and troubled life—reminds me of a certain class of spendthrift women, whose expensive housekeeping is defrayed by an out-of-wedlock generosity, and who torment and bless their titular spouses very often with love and fidelity; though not seldom with love alone, but always with wild whims. And was she in reality different from them—this Cleopatra, who could not maintain her unheard-of luxury with the Egyptian crown-revenue, and who took from Antony, her Roman entreteneur, the squeezed-out treasures of whole provinces for "presents"—and in the true sense of the word, was a kept—queen!