Sardou's Cleopatra — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

33 | SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. CHAPTER III. THE GREEK SLAVE. It was the hour just before dawn; the roofs of Memphis had not yet caught the first flash of the sunlight, and the inhabitants were still fast bound in the embrace of the sleepy god, when a slender, girlish figure, so closely wrapped in the volumin- ous folds of her dark-colored peplum that even her face was concealed, emerged from a dark, nar- row street into the square before the most mag- nificent temple of this city of magnificent temples, the Iseum, or Temple of Isis, built four centuries before by Amasis the Second. The girl gave a quick glance about her, and then, hurriedly crossing the square, she proceeded round the side of the temple until she came to a small wooden door, set in heavy blocks of Syenitic granite. Upon this door she struck three distinct blows, followed after an interval of a few seconds by three more. Then, placing her ear GO comicbooks