They joined with them a company of revelers as abandoned as themselves, and strove very hard to disguise and conceal their cares in their forced and unnatural gayety.

They could not, however, accomplish this purpose.

Octavius was gradually advancing in his progress, and they knew very well that the time of his dreadful reckoning with them must soon come; nor was there any place on earth in which they could look with any hope of finding a refuge in it from his vindictive hostility.
Cleopatra, warned by dreadful presentiments of what would probably at last be her fate, amused herself in studying the nature of poisons--not theoretically, but practically--making experiments with them on wretched prisoners and captives whom she compelled to take them in order that she and Antony might see the effects which they produced.

She made a collection of all the poisons which she could procure, and administered portions of them all, that she might see which were sudden and which were slow in their effects, and also learn which produced the greatest distress and suffering, and which, on the other hand, only benumbed and stupefied the faculties, and thus extinguished life with the least infliction of pain.

These experiments were not confined to such vegetable and mineral poisons as could be mingled with the food or administered in a potion.