Caesar was a reserved, disbelieving, obdurate man, and Cleopatra had conquered him by loving him for what others found repellent. ‘In you, Caesar,' she told him, ‘I have something that, being not sweet, will not corrupt-but, like a sour metal, will only tarnish.' And in Cleopatra Caesar had something of another world, something hellish it might be, a stranger-but, because a stranger, one with whom he could yield to weariness of himself and yet feel that in his own world he had lost none of its secrets.