He curses her of course after every trick, lie knows all her faults, and his better judgment expresses itself in the coarsest abuse, when he says with bitterest truth:—
"You were half blasted ere I knew you:—Ha ?
Have I my pillow, left unpress'd in Rome,
Forborne the getting of a lawful race,
And by a gem of women, to be abused
By one that looks on feeders?
Cleo. Good my lord,—
Ant. You have been a boggler ever:
But when we in our viciousness grow hard,
(O misery on 't!) the wise gods seal our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at us, while we strut
To our confusion.
Cleo. is it come to this ?
Ant. I found you as a morsel, cold upon
Dead Cæsar's trencher : nay, you were a fragment
Of Cneius Pompey's ; besides what hotter hours,
Unregister'd in vulgar fame, you have
Luxuriously pick'd out:—For, I am sure,
Though you can guess what temperance should be,
You know not what it is."[1]
But like the spear of Achilles, which could heal the wounds which it gave, the mouth of the beloved one can heal again with its kisses the deadliest stabs which his sharp words had given to her feelings. And after that infamy which the serpent of old Nile had inflicted on the Roman
- ↑ Antony and Cleopatra, act. iii. sc. II
