He decimated the
senate. Soldiers, freemen, citizens, anybody and everybody were
ordered off to death. He tried to kill himself and failed; he
tried again, wondering, no doubt, why he who commanded death for
others could not command it for himself. Presently he succeeded,
and Antonin--the pious Antonin, as the senate called him--
marshalled from cellars and crypts the senators and citizens whom
Hadrian had ordered to be destroyed.
VIII
FAUSTINE
Anyone who has loitered a moment among the statues in the Salle
des Antonins at the Louvre will recall the bust of the Empress
Faustina. It stands near the entrance, coercing the idler to
remove his hat; to stop a moment, to gaze and dream. The face
differs from that which Mr. Swinburne has described. In the poise
of the head, in the expression of the lips, particularly in the
features which, save the low brow, are not of the Roman type,
there is a commingling of just that loveliness and melancholy
which must have come to Psyche when she lost her god. In the
corners of the mouth, in the droop of the eyelids, in the moulding
of the chin, you may see that rarity--beauty and intellect in one
--and with it the heightening shadow of an eternal regret. Before
her Marcus Aurelius, her husband, stands, decked with the purple,
with all the splendor of the imperator, his beard in overlapping
curls, his questioning eyes dilated.
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