About
it were green savannahs, forest reaches, the call of bird and
deer, while in the distance, fronted by a stretch of columns a
mile in length, the palace stood--a palace so ineffably charming
that on the day of reckoning may it outbalance a few of his sins.
Even the cellars were frescoed. The baths were quite comfortable;
you had waters salt or sulphurous at will. The dining halls had
ivory ceilings from which flowers fell, and wainscots that changed
at each service. The walls were alive with the glisten of gems,
with marbles rarer than jewels. In one hall was a dome of
sapphire, a floor of malachite, crystal columns and red-gold
walls.
"At last," Nero murmured, "I am lodged like a man."
No doubt. Yet in a mirror he would have seen a bloated beast in a
flowered gown, the hair done up in a chignon, the skin covered
with eruptions, the eyes circled and yellow; a woman who had hours
when she imitated a virgin at bay, others when she was wife, still
others when she expected to be a mother, and that woman, a
senatorial patent of divinity aiding, was god--Apollo's peer,
imperator, chief of the army, pontifix maximus, master of the
world, with the incontestable right of life and death over every
being in the dominions.
It had taken the fresh-faced lad who blushed so readily, just
fourteen years to effect that change. Did he regret it? And what
should Nero regret? Nothing, perhaps, save that at the moment when
he declared himself to be lodged like a man, he had not killed
himself like one.
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