not take the elixir?"  There was another paragraph of translation:
  
  "How can I bear this burden any longer? How can I endure the loneliness anymore? Yet I 
can not die. Her poisons can not harm me. They keep my elixir safe so that I may dream of 
still other Queens, both fair and wise, to share the centuries with me. But is it not her 
face I see? Her voice I hear? Cleopatra. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Cleopatra."
  
  Latin followed. Several scribbled paragraphs in Latin which Julie could not read. Even 
with the aid of a dictionary she could not have translated it. Then there were a few 
lines of demotic Egyptian, even more nearly impenetrable than that Latin. Nothing more.
  
  She laid down the book. She fought the inevitable tears. It was almost as if she could 
feel the presence of her father in this room. How excited he must have been, what a 
lovely scribble his handwriting had become.
  
  And how lovely the whole mystery was.
  
  Somewhere among all those poisons, an elixir that conveyed immortality? One need not 
take it literally to find it beautiful.
  
  And behold that tiny silver burner and the delicate vial. Ramses the Damned had 
believed it. Perhaps her father had believed it. And for the moment, well, maybe she did 
too.
  
  She rose slowly and approached the long marble table against the opposite wall. The 
scrolls were too fragile. There were tiny bits and pieces of papyrus scattered 
everywhere. She had seen this damage done as die men lifted them ever so carefully from 
their crates. She dared not touch them. Besides, she couldn't read them.
  
  As for the jars, she mustn't touch them either. What if some of that poison were 
spilled, or somehow released into the air?
  
  She found herself suddenly looking at her own reflection in the mirror on the wall. She 
went back to the desk, and opened the folded newspaper that lay there.
  
  Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was enjoying a long run in London. She and Alex had 
meant to go and see it, but then Alex fell asleep during serious plays. Only Gilbert and 
Sullivan entertained Alex. and even then he was usually nodding off by the end of the 
third act.
  
  She studied the little announcement for the performance. She stood up and reached for 
Plutarch on the bookshelf above the desk.
  
  Where was the story of Cleopatra? Plutarch had not devoted a full biography to her. No, 
her story was contained in that of Mark Antony, of course.
  
  She paged quickly to the passages she only dimly remembered. Cleopatra had been a great 
Queen, and what we call now a great politician. She had not only seduced Caesar and 
Antony, she kept Egypt free of Roman conquest for decades, finally taking her own life 
when Antony was dead by his own hand, and Octavius Caesar had stormed her gates. The loss 
of Egypt to Rome had been inevitable, but she had almost turned the tide. Had Julius 
Caesar not been assassinated, he might have made Cleopatra his Empress. Had Mark Antony 
been a little stronger, Octavian might have been overthrown.
  
  Even in her final days, however, Cleopatra had been victorious in her own way. Octavian 
wanted to take her to Rome as a royal prisoner. She had cheated him. She had tried out 
dozens of poisons on condemned prisoners, and then chosen the bite of a snake to end her 
life. The Roman guards had not prevented her suicide. And so Octavian took possession of 
Egypt. But Cleopatra he could not have. Julie closed the book almost reverently. She 
looked at the long row of alabaster jars. Could these really be those very poisons?
  
  She fell into a strange reverie as she gazed at the magnificent coffin. A hundred like 
it she had seen here and in Cairo. A hundred like it she had examined ever since she 
could remember. Only this one contained a man who claimed to be immortal. Who claimed to 
be entering not death when he was buried, but" a dream-filled sleep."
  
  What was the secret of that slumber? Of being awakened from it? And the elixir!
  
  "Ramses the Damned,"  she whispered." Would you wake for me as you did for Cleopatra? 
Would you wake for a new century of indescribable marvels even though your Queen is dead?"
  
  No answer but silence; and the large soft eyes of the golden King staring at her, 
graven hands folded over his chest.
  
  "That's robbery!"  Henry said, barely able to contain his anger." The thing's 
priceless."  He glared at the little man behind the desk in the back office of the coin 
shop. Miserable little thief in his stuffy world of dirty glass cases and bits and pieces 
of money displayed as if they were jewels.
  
  "If it's genuine, yes,"  the man answered slowly." And if it's genuine, where did it 
come from? A coin like this with a perfect image of Cleopatra? That's what they will want 
to know, you see, where did it come from? And you have not told me your name."
  
  "No, I haven't."  Exasperated, he snatched the coin back from the dealer, slipped it 
into his pocket and turned to go. He stopped long enough to put on his gloves. What did 
he have left? Fifty pounds? He was in a fury. He let the door slam behind him as he 
walked into the biting wind.
  
  The dealer sat quite still for a long moment. He could still feel the coin that he had 
let slip literally from his hand. Never in all these long years had he seen anything 
quite like it. He knew it was genuine, and suddenly he felt the fool as never before in 
his life.
  
  He should have bought it! He should have taken the risk. But he knew it was stolen, and 
not even for the Queen of the Nile could he become a thief.
  
  
  
  He rose from the desk, and passed through the dusty serge curtains that separated his 
shop from a tiny drawing room where he spent much of his time, even during business