H’m. To-day’s hypocrisy over. Not that it is, though, for I have to play the hypocrite one way and another every minute of my life. I’m beginning to think it’s a mistake to be a tyrant. It’s exciting enough when you have to fight for it; but when you’ve got it, decidedly a bore. And unluckily the posing isn’t the worst of it; the worst of it is that you have to suppress so many good fellows. Now I know Egnatius is guilty of the impiety of not seeing why he should do what I please any more than I should do what he pleases. I must get rid of him; I can’t help myself. Such a witty, astute fellow, too, and what a boxer! Iulus I must get rid of, too. I fancy Maecenas has got his own reasons for wanting Iulus out of the way; still he is his father’s son, and never quite safe. A man I’ve known since they first put me into the long gown. No, I sha’n’t get rid of Iulus; he can go to Gyarus if Maecenas likes. No, dam it, why Gyarus? He won’t do any harm at Rhodes, and at least he can get a dinner there. Poor old Iulus! And poor old Agrippa! I suppose he wants to go away because, he can’t stand Julia any more. I should never mind that sort of scandal myself, but some do. Perhaps I was to blame in giving him Julia at all, knowing her character. But she had to marry somebody and that somebody could be none else than Agrippa. Such is statesmanship! Now the poor old boy wants to go back to his soldiers. But I can’t do it. Once he gets to Pannonia, he’d forget his obedience—and he is most astonishingly obedient—and go for the chiefs. His loyalty’s splendid, but I can’t trust even it, when the old war-horse sees the enemy in front of him. And the worst of it is that the chiefs ought to be smashed this summer, and no man in the world could do it as well as Agrippa. It would be all over in a month. But Pannonia’s got to be nursed, for Pannonia’s to be a big thing, and Tiberius is to get his triumph for it, sulky dog. Yet he’s got the stuff in him, too. I suppose I’d better make up some reason to send Agrippa to Gaul again: Livia can’t object to him there. After all, the real devil of it isn’t being a tyrant, but being a married tyrant. There isn’t an easier or pleasanter thing in the whole world than to go on as I’m doing now, and keep my place to the end, and my friends into the bargain. It’s this cursed dynasty business, and that cursed woman—though she’s behaved a deuced deal better to me than I deserved. But why in the name of all the gods at once must I turn out my oldest friend to die miserable in Gaul? Why, to make the way easy for a moody young prig that I dislike—and who hates me. What do I get for it all? Candidia! That’s what it comes to, when you work it out. I’m monarch of the world, and the gain of it is that I have unequaled chances of making a ridiculous goddam goat of myself. I wish to Heaven I’d had my uncle’s pluck: then I should have been cut to pieces ten years ago. Still after