“At your age while we are awake we live three times as fast as at mine, and so we need to sleep twice as long. You have every right to be tired. To be sure it was not till three hours after midnight that we climbed the mountain, and how often a supper party is not over before that.” “It was very cold and uncomfortable up there.” “Not till after the sun had risen.” “Ah! before that you did not notice it, for till then you were busy thinking of the stars.” “And you only of yourself--very true.” “I was thinking of your health too when that cold wind rose before Helios appeared.” “I was obliged to await his rising.” “And can you discern future events by the way and manner of the rising of the sun?” Hadrian looked in surprise at the speaker, shook his head in negation, looked up at the top of the tent, and after a long pause said, in abrupt sentences, with frequent interruptions: “Day is the present merely, and the future is evolved out of darkness; the corn grows from the clods of the field; the rain falls from the darkest clouds; a new generation is born of the mother’s womb; the limbs recover their vigor in sleep. And what is begotten of the darkness of death--who can tell?” When, after saying this, the Emperor had remained for some time silent, the youth asked him: “But if the sunrise teaches you nothing concerning the future why should you so often break your night’s rest and climb the mountain to see it?” “Why? Why?” repeated Hadrian, slowly and meditatively, stroking his grizzled beard; then he went on as if speaking to himself: “That is a question which reason fails to answer, before which my lips find no words; and, if I had them at my command, who among the rabble would understand me? Such questions can best be answered by means of parables. Those who take part in life are actors, and the world is their stage. He who wants to look tall on it wears the cothurnus, and is not a mountain the highest vantage ground that a man can find for the sole of his foot? Kasius there is but a hill, but I have stood on greater giants than he, and seen the clouds rise below me, like Jupiter on Olympus.” “But you need climb no mountains to feel yourself a god,” cried Antinous; “the godlike is your title--you command and the world must obey. With a mountain beneath his feet a man is nearer to heaven no doubt than he is on the plain.” “Well?” “I dare not say what came into my mind.” “Speak out.” “I knew a little girl who when I took her on my shoulder would stretch out her arms and exclaim, ‘I am so tall!’ She fancied that she was taller than I then, and yet was only little Panthea.”