Yes, Nero admitted, he had endeavored to express himself in that house also. The Golden House had been (to play with metaphor) the handsome binding of that poem which was his life, when in a setting such as the world had never known, before or since, he had given to his every human trait its full color value. In the Golden House he had reared his orchids, he had labored to open many frank and incisive and utterly unstinted avenues of self-expression to that somewhat complex thing called human nature.... But here he entered rather explicitly into details. Gerald felt the style of this emperor to be growing woefully un-American; and Gerald fidgeted. “Let us, I again urge you,” said Gerald, “speak of less personal matters, and diversify the vividness of these orchids with a few fig-leaves!” Perhaps, of course, the Emperor continued, he, like every other really great artist, had been somewhat the anthologist, in that he had invented outright none of the art forms among the many in which he had distinguished himself. He had taken over from his predecessors a number of inspirations and a formula or two, as he would be the very last to deny: but the fine craftsmanship was all his, as well as that distinguishing, that peculiarly Neronic, touch of romantic irony, by virtue of which this artist had slain with suavity, had destroyed with a caress, and had ennobled all that was most dear to his human nature by killing it. He spoke now of the deaths of his wives, of Octavia and Poppæa, and of others who had been his wives just for the evening; he spoke of Sporus, of Aiëtes, of Narcissus, and of that other exceedingly beautiful boy, Aulus Plautinus.... And again Gerald raised a protesting hand. “Let us still,” said Gerald, “avoid these quite un-American personalities! Meanwhile, you do not speak of your mother Agrippina.” He surprised in the spotted face of Nero something very like terror. But Nero said only, “No.”