صفحة 325 من 490

In the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with laurel, lest

lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius, in a garden

at Capri, reading the shameful books of Elephantis, while dwarfs

and peacocks strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the

swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had caroused with the

green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in an ivory

manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had

wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking

round with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was

to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible taedium

vitae, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing; and had

peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the circus

and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod

mules, been carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a House

of Gold and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as

Elagabalus, had painted his face with colours, and plied the

distaff among the women, and brought the Moon from Carthage and

given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.