Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/325

Rh In the ever excited, irregular mind of Cleopatra, made of extremes tossed together by reckless chance, a soul oppressively sultry, there flashes like heat-lightning all the time a sensuous, wild, and brimstone-yellow wit, which rather frightens than pleases. Plutarch gives us an idea of this wit, which shows itself more in deeds than words, and even in school I laughed with all my heart at the mystified Antony, who went with his queenly love fishing, but drew up on his line a salt fish—the crafty Egyptian dame having employed divers, one of whom had fastened it on his hook. Our teacher indeed frowned at this anecdote, and blamed the wicked wantonness with which the queen risked the lives of her subjects, the poor divers, to carry out a jest ; but our teacher was not a friend to Cleopatra, and he made us specially observe how Antony, through her, destroyed his whole public career, got himself involved in domestic difficulties, and at last plunged headlong into ruin. Yes, my old teacher was quite right—it is utterly dangerous to enter into intimate relations with such a person as Cleopatra. A hero can go to the devil in this way, but only a hero. Good commonplaceness suffers no danger here—nor anywhere. The position of Cleopatra was as intensely droll as her character. This capricious-peevish,