Sardou's Cleopatra — page 132: what you’re looking at

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

SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. 117 by a summer’s breeze. There was nothing to break the awe-inspiring immensity save the plateau on which rested the imposing vastness of the three pyramids, the tombs of Khufu, Khafra and Menkera, with their polished lime- stone sides covered with pictures and hieroglyph- ics that told the glorious history of the warrior kings. Keeping guard at the foot of the steps that led’to the platform was the gigantic sphinx, the symbol of Horus, whose serene face bore the calm repose of the lonely land around it. Motionless, as if a recumbent statue herself, lay the queen of this inscrutable land, her dark eyes fixed somberly upon the horizon. Cleopatra’s confidence, inspired by the words of the Greek slave, had been but short-lived. As day after day went by, with still no news of Antony, all her courage failed. She left all the cares of state to her ministers, and, attended only by her tire-women and Kephren, spent all her time in a moody watching for some sign from her recreant lover. Of Pharon she thought nothing save to regret the impulse of pity that had led her to give him his life, and to feel an occasional anger that she had neglected to demand the name of the one under whose inspiration he had fired ‘comicbooks (Ele)