At eight years, when he was already _præsul_ of the Salian priests, Hadrian remarked this sad child, and loved him for his good-nature, his docility, and his incapability of falsehood. At eighteen years the empire was assured to him. He awaited it patiently for twenty-two years. The evening when Antonine, feeling himself about to die, after having given to the tribune the watchword, _Æquanimitas_, commanded the golden statue of Fortune, which was always in the apartment of the emperor, to be borne into that of his adopted son, he experienced neither surprise nor joy. He had long been sated with all joys, without having tasted them: he had seen the absolute vanity of them by the profoundness of his philosophy. The great inconvenience of practical life, and that which renders it insupportable to a superior man, is, that, if one carries into it the principles of the ideal, talents become defects; so that very often the accomplished man is less successful in it than one who is fitted by egotism or ordinary routine. Three or four times the virtue of Marcus Aurelius came near being his ruin. The first fault into which it led him was that of sharing the empire with Lucius Verus, to whom he was under no obligation. Verus was a frivolous and worthless man. Prodigies of goodness and delicacy were necessary in order to prevent his committing disastrous follies. The wise emperor, earnest and industrious, took with him in his _lectica_ (sedan) the senseless colleague whom he had given himself. He persisted in treating him seriously: he never once revolted against this sorry companionship. Like all well-bred men, Marcus Aurelius discommoded himself continually: his manners came from a general habit of firmness and dignity. Souls of this kind, either from respect for human nature, or in order not to wound others, resign themselves to the appearance of seeing no evil. Their life is a perpetual dissimulation.