in men's souls--to rule over an invisible and immaterial
empire!--had he been less sensual and less wealthy, he might have sought
to become the founder of a new religion. As it was, his energies were
checked by his pleasures. Besides, however, the vague love of this moral
sway (vanity so dear to sages!) he was influenced by a singular and
dreamlike devotion to all that belonged to the mystic Land his ancestors
had swayed. Although he disbelieved in her deities, he believed in the
allegories they represented (or rather he interpreted those allegories
anew). He loved to keep alive the worship of Egypt, because he thus
maintained the shadow and the recollection of her power. He loaded,
therefore, the altars of Osiris and of Isis with regal donations, and
was ever anxious to dignify their priesthood by new and wealthy
converts. The vow taken--the priesthood embraced--he usually chose the
comrades of his pleasures from those whom he made his victims, partly
because he thus secured to himself their secrecy--partly because he thus
yet more confirmed to himself his peculiar power. Hence the motives of
his conduct to Apaecides, strengthened as these were, in that instance,
by his passion for Ione.

He had seldom lived long in one place; but as he grew older, he grew
more wearied of the excitement of new scenes, and he had sojourned among
the delightful cities of Campania for a period which surprised even
himself. In fact, his pride somewhat crippled his choice of residence.
His unsuccessful conspiracy excluded him from those burning climes which
he deemed of right his own hereditary possession, and which now cowered,
supine and sunken, under the wings of the Roman eagle. Rome herself was
hateful to his indignant soul; nor did he love to find his riches
rivalled by the minions of the court, and cast into comparative poverty
by the mighty magnificence of the court itself. The Campanian cities
proffered to him all that his nature craved--the luxuries of an
unequalled climate--the imaginative refinements of a voluptuous
civilization. He was removed from the sight of a superior wealth; he
was without rivals to his riches; he was free from the spies of a
jealous court. As long as he was rich, none pried into his conduct. He
pursued the dark tenour of his way undisturbed and secure.

It is the curse of sensualists never to love till the pleasures of sense
begin to pall; their ardent youth is frittered away in countless
desire