“That jargon becomes somewhat senescent,” said Gerald. “Still, as a museum piece,—yes, even now, sophistication does display something of the quaint beauty of thorough obsoleteness. It has acquired the charm, and, as it were, the patina, of sedan chairs and of full-bottom wigs and of girdles of chastity and of suits of armor, and of all other things, once useful enough, which are nowadays endeared to every poet’s heart by the fact that they are forever outmoded. So let us grant it, O Cæsar, in the days that are gone you were a devil of a fellow and a sad rip among the ladies—” “Why, but, for that matter—” Nero began. “I know. You broad-mindedly despised neither sex. You were in amour a Greek scholar. You were something of a surgeon also. I concede it, I blush, and I urge you to omit all embarrassingly personal details.” So Nero went on, saying that other emperors, with very much his chances, had lacked the genius necessary to develop these chances. There had, of course, been minor artists. Caligula, for example, among so much hackwork in the way of throat-cutting, had shown at least one jet of rather lovely inspiration when he attempted a criminal assault upon the moon; that was a really finely imagined bit of work. Then, also, Domitian and Commodus and Tiberius had displayed praiseworthy ambitions; quite neat little things had been done by Tiberius, in an amateur way, at Capri; Caracalla too had been so-so: but they had all tended to wallow unimaginatively in cut and dried executions; merely to chop off anybody’s head was not art, no matter how often you did it. Besides, work done upon a public scaffold inevitably coarsened one’s touch. And Heliogabalus, whatsoever the lad’s thin vein of undeniable talent in the way of lyric lechery, had lacked the stamina and gusto for any sustained masterpiece in Nero’s copious epic style. For Nero alone had been, in every branch of self-expression, the sincere, skilled artist, enriching his handiwork always with that continual slight novelty which art demands. He had builded his appropriate stage, in the Golden House— “A house entirely overlaid with gold,” said Gerald, reminiscently, “and adorned everywhere with jewels and mother of pearl, a house so rich and ample that it had three-storied porticos a mile long, and huge revolving banqueting halls, and ivory ceilings which perpetually scattered perfumes and red rose-petals—” Nero, at that, had out his emerald monocle; and through it he now regarded Gerald with the childlike amiability of a sincere artist whensoever his vanity is flattered.