Читать книгу Cleopatra онлайн

19 страница из 51

The barge of Cleopatra was a floating palace. The charming apartments of the Bruchium were reproduced in miniature. The various vessels which accompanied it accommodated a large staff, not of servants alone, but bands of dancers, poets, musicians, who were engaged to while away the time and make life an enchanting dream.

Winter was at hand; that season of snow and frost which, in less fortunate lands, plunges people in gloom; when all the fields are in mourning and the shivering trees wave their naked branches in distress. But there was no depression along the sunny route chosen by our travellers. Propelled by the steady rowing of fifty Nubians pulling on oars of ebony, they glided along, intoxicated with freedom, happiness, space, as toward a Promised Land, and at each stopping-place the golden sun seemed to shine with a richer glow.

All at once, after the leagues of emerald foliage of the first few days, the vegetation grew scanty, the barge slipped along between barren shores, and the country, as far as the distant horizon, was a vast stretch of sand covered with arid hillocks, like volutes of silver, which melted away in the mist. Here and there groups of aloes waved their sharp, blade-like branches, or clusters of date trees shook their feathery plumes, like giant torches about to burst into flame.