I was sitting on a strong bough of a sycamore-tree, which grew opposite to the house, watching for them.
Their arrival was delayed and, as I gazed meanwhile over the garden, I thought it must surely please them, for not a palace in the city had one so beautiful.
"At last the litters appeared; they had neither runners nor attendants, as my father had requested, and when the princesses alighted--both at the same moment--I knew not which way to turn my eyes first, for the creature that fluttered like a dragon-fly rather than stepped from the first litter, was not a girl like other mortals--she seemed like a wish, a hope.

When the dainty, beautiful creature turned her head hither and thither, and at last gazed questioningly, as if beseeching help, into the faces of my father and mother, who stood at the gate to receive her, it seemed to me that such must have been the aspect of Psyche when she stood pleading for mercy at the throne of Zeus.
"But it was worth while to look at the other also.

Was that Cleopatra?
She might have been the elder, for she was as tall as her sister, but how utterly unlike! From the waving hair to every movement of the hands and body the former--it was Cleopatra--had seemed to me as if she were flying.

Everything about the second figure, on the contrary, was solid, nay, even seemed to offer positive resistance.

She sprang from the litter and alighted on the ground with both feet at once, clung firmly to the door, and haughtily flung back her head, crowned with a wealth of dark locks.