Sardou's Cleopatra — page 202: what you’re looking at

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

SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. 187 “Rise, miserable wretch!” she commanded. “Rise, I say.” Slowly and with difficulty, Diomedes obeyed. His face was livid, and his shaking limbs could scarcely support him. He knew that his hour had come. “Drink!” His lips moved as if in appeal, but no sound issued from them. “Drink !” Mechanically he took the cup and, so terrified as to be half bereft of his senses, scarce knowing what he was doing, he swallowed the potion. Then, with a wild shriek, he fell headlong to the ground, where he lay writhing in agony, his eyes bulging from his head and a white foam issuing from his mouth. Suddenly, his limbs stiffened, and, after one last horrible convulsion, he lay dead at the feet of Cleopatra, who was watching his agony with a hard, cruel look about her lips. | “Kephren, drag that carrion away!” she said. ‘And so perish all the enemies of Cleopatra.” Then, as Kephren disappeared with the unfor- tunate wretch, her face underwent a wondrous Eomicbooks rae)