Sardou's Cleopatra — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

86. SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. and stretched out her hands to the kneeling sages. “Rise!” she commanded. ‘Philosophers, sages, scholars, rise! It pains me to see you in that humble attitude. You, who represent the arts and sciences; have a right to have your wishes gratified. Before judging, the world awaits your judgments. By you, Egypt has been placed in the first rank of nations. With us, what makes man great is thought; and the head of the thinker, like the head of a king, should never be lowered, not even before me.” One by one, the grateful men, with protesta- tions of devotion, kissed her fair hand and took their leave. The audience was over, and the queen was alone with her maidens. With a sigh of weariness, Cleopatra crossed to the window and looked out upon the landscape that lay hot and parched beneath the torrid rays | of the midday sun. ‘There was not a cloud in the changeless azure of the sky. The green Nile flowed sluggishly between its reddish banks. The leaves of the flowers and bushes in the gar- den hung limp and lifeless, with no breath of air to refresh them. ~*comicbooks (E(e)