This sceptred misanthrope possessed it, and it was in that his
wife was blessed. Years later he died, forgiving her in silence,
praising her aloud. Claud, referring to Messalina, shouted through
the Forum that the fate which destined him to marry impure women
destined him to punish them. Marcus Aurelius said nothing. He did
not know what fate destined him to do, but he did know that
philosophy taught him to forgive.
It was this philosophy that first perplexed Faustine. She was
restless, frivolous, perhaps also a trifle depraved. Frivolous
because all women were, depraved because her mother was, and
restless because of the curiosity that inflammable imaginations
share--in brief, a Roman princess. Her husband differed from the
Roman prince. His youth had not been entirely circumspect; he,
too, had his curiosities, but they were satisfied, he had found
that they stained. When he married he was already the thinker;
doubtless, he was tiresome; he could have had little small-talk,
and his hours of love-making must have been rare. Presently the
affairs of state engrossed him. Faustine was left to herself; save
a friend of her own sex, a woman can have no worse companion. She,
too, discovered she had curiosities. A gladiator passed that way--
then Rome; then Lesbos; then the Lampsacene. "You are my husband's
mistress," her daughter cried at her. "And you," the mother
answered, "are your brother's.
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