Cleopatra, page 119 by H. Rider Haggard
<< Return to Title Details & Download120
man without a soul. I conned the fatal lists and noted all the plans-- ay, in my brain I gathered up the very words of that proclamation of my Royalty which, on the morrow, I should issue to the startled world.
"Citizens of Alexandria and dwellers in the land of Egypt," it began, "Cleopatra the Macedonian hath, by the command of the Gods, suffered justice for her crimes----"
All these and other things I did, but I did them as a man without a soul--as a man moved by a force from without and not from within. And so the minutes wore away. In the third hour of the afternoon I went as by appointment fixed to the house where my uncle Sepa lodged, that same house to which I had been brought some three months gone when I entered Alexandria for the first time. And here I found the leaders of the revolt in the city assembled in secret conclave to the number of seven. When I had entered, and the doors were barred, they prostrated themselves, and cried, "Hail, Pharaoh!" but I bade them rise, saying that I was not yet Pharaoh, for the chicken was still in the egg.
"Yea, Prince," said my uncle, "but his beak shows through. Not in vain hath Egypt brooded all these years, if thou fail not with that dagger- stroke of thine to-night; and how canst thou fail? Nothing can now stop our course to victory!"
"It is on the knees of the Gods," I answered.
"Nay," he said, "the Gods have placed the issue in the hands of a mortal--in thy hands, Harmachis!--and there it is safe. See: here are the last lists. Thirty-one thousand men who bear arms are sworn to rise when the tidings come to them. Within five days every citadel in Egypt will be in our hands, and then what have we to fear? From Rome but little, for her hands are full; and, besides, we will make alliance with the Triumvirate, and, if need be, buy them off. For of money there is plenty in the land, and if more be wanted thou, Harmachis, knowest where it is stored against the need of Khem, and outside the Roman's reach of arm. Who is there to harm