PEARLS 221 



grains. The containing shell may have been big only 

 in comparison with its contemporaries. A very small 

 man has been known to be afflicted with a dispropor- 

 tioned goitre, and there are some who argue that the 

 goitre may be but the prototype of the pearl. 



Is fact or fable to claim the most glorious of pearl 

 stories? Some verily believe that Cleopatra did quaff 

 the costliest beverage the world has ever known. The 

 incident is so faithful to the character of "that rare 

 Egyptian" that all sober record shall not discount delight 

 in its transcendent sumptuousness. Though the pearl 

 may have been worth eighty thousand pounds of our 

 money, though Cleopatra was gay, though her extrava- 

 gance was impious, she was a glorious woman, and she 

 had at least one glorious, if nauseating, drink. The 

 pearl decoction was merely an episode in her policy, 

 which was to fascinate Antony Antony who had called 

 her to account for having aided his enemies in their 

 war against him. And what was an eighty thousand 

 pound bauble in the high affairs of State ? "She was 

 at the age when a woman's beauty is at its prime, and 

 she was also of the best judgment. So she furnished 

 herself with a world of gifts, stores of gold and silver, 

 and of riches and other sumptuous ornaments as is 

 credible she might bring from so great a house and from 

 so wealthy and rich a realm as Egypt. But yet she 

 carried nothing with her wherein she trusted more than 

 herself, and in the charms and enchantment of her 

 surpassing beauty and grace." 



And then the supper following the magnificent 

 pageant ! Anything less than an eighty thousand 

 pound pearl would have been an anti-climax, a mean 

 and clumsy culmination of a "gaudy night." That 

 soul-delighting gem which vanished in foam told of a 

 superb Cleopatra's "calm felicity and power." 



