Sardou's Cleopatra — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

102 SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA, forth anew, heightened, as they were, by the aban- donment of his sister, to whom he was sincerely attached. He ordered Octavia to leave Antony’s house and come to him, but she refused, declaring that the house of her husband, whatever that husband might be guilty of, was the place where it was her duty to remain. With remarkable self-abnegation, the noble woman sought to repair the breach that had been made between her husband and her brother. She procured an interview with Octavius, and pleaded her husband’s cause with all the courage and- energy she could command. She entreated her brother to delay and not take such measures as would make ‘ther the most miserable of women. Of the two most powerful men in the world, she was the wife of one and the sister of the other. If violent counsels were to be listened*to and war were to ensue, she would be the one to suffer the most deeply. For, whichever side conquered, she would be forced to grieve. Octavius, cool and calculating as he was, did not remain insensible to his sister’s distress. _ But his resentment at Antony’s baseness, and his fear of him as the chief obstacle in the way of his ownambitiousdesigns,remainedas keen as ever. /comicbooks. co