wolf, and after every curse which he had howled at her—the pair kiss à la Florentine the more tenderly,[1] even in dying he presses on her lips the last of so many kisses.
And she, the Egyptian snake, how she loves her Roman wolf! Her betrayals are only the external irrepressible twinings and coils of her evil serpent nature; she practises them mechanically, because they are in her inborn or habitual habit, but in the depth of her soul there is the deepest unchanging love for Antony. Yes, she herself knows not how strong it is. Many a time she thinks she can conquer or play with it, but she errs, and the error will appear to her at the moment when she loses the man whom she loves, and her agony bursts forth in the sublime words: —
" Cleo. I dream'd, there was an emperor Antony ;
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man !
Dol. If it might please you, —
Cleo. His face was as the heavens ; and therein stuck
A sun, and moon ; which kept their course, and lighted
The little O, the earth.
Dol. Most sovereign creature,—
- ↑ Züngeln, to kiss, touching the tongues together—the baisér à la Florentine. In that remarkable work, Delle Bizzarerie Academiche, by Gio. Francesco Loredano, Venice, 1667, there is a chapter on this subject, but according to him this peculiar osculation is effected by holding the ears of the subject, and kissing lip to lip. French writers define it as I have done.
