ms; the
delicate sensuality of Rome was foreign to him. It was there that
Domitian had lived.

It were interesting to have watched that young man killing flies by the
hour, while he meditated on the atrocities he was to commit--atrocities
so numberless and needless that in the red halls of the Caesars he has
left a portrait which is unique. Slender, graceful, handsome, as were
all the young emperors of old Rome, his blue, troubled eyes took
pleasure, if at all, only in the sight of blood.

In accordance with the fashion which Caligula and Nero had set,
Domitian's earliest manners were those of an urbane and gentle prince.
Later, when he made it his turn to rule, informers begged their bread
in exile. Where they are not punished, he announced, they are
encouraged. The sacrifices were so distressing to him that he forbade
the immolation of oxen. He was disinterested, too, refusing legacies
when the testator left nearer heirs, and therewith royally generous,
covering his suite with presents, and declaring that to him avarice of
all vices was the lowest and most vile. In short, you would have said
another adolescent Nero come to Rome; there was the same silken
sweetness of demeanor, the same ready blush, in addition to a zeal for
justice and equity which other young emperors had been too thoughtless
to show.

His boyhood, too, had not been above reproach. The same things were
whispered about him that had been shouted at Augustus. Manifestly he
lacked not one of the qualities which go to the making of a model
prince. Vespasian alone had his doubts.

"Mushrooms won't hurt you," he cried one day, as Domitian started at
the sight of a ragout a la Sardanapale, which he fancied, possibly, was
a la Locuste, "It is steel you should fear."

At that time, with a father for emperor and a brother who was sacking
Jerusalem, Domitian had but one cause for anxiety, to wit--that the
empire might escape him. It was then he began his meditations over
holocausts of flies. For hours he secluded himself, occupied solely
with their slaughter. He treated them precisely as Titus treated the
Jews, enjoying the quiver of their legs, the little agonies of their
silent death.

Tiberius had been in love with solitude, but never as he. Night after
night he wandered on the terraces of the palace, watching the red moon
wane white, companioned only by his dreams, those waking dreams that
poets and madmen share, that Pallas had him in her charge, th