Sardou's Cleopatra — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

26 SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. ‘The great queen has won your pardon. ‘ar- sus is forgiven. Rome demands neither lives nor tribute.” For an instant, there was silence; and then a mighty shout went up which rent the heavens, aud then another and another. ‘The people, thus suddenly freed from the threatened danger, were frantic with delight. ‘The prisoners prostrated themselves in gratitude at the foot of the steps. Cleopatra gazed at the scene with a radiant ~ look of conscious power and gratified triumph. She had won! Amidst all the enthusiasm, Ventidius stood apart, with folded arms and gloomy brow. He glanced at the galley, lying idly on the Cydnus, with its wealth of gorgeous decorations and crowded with fantastically arrayed figures; and then to the portico of the market-house. The queen’s women were reclining upon the steps in attitudes of picturesque abandon. Cleopatra her- self was seated in the chair with the gilded Roman eagles, her delicate draperies half con- cealing, half revealing the ravishing lines of her faultless figure. Antony stood beside her, a look of passionate admiration on his handsome, manly TAC, comicbooks:¢co