The Emperor — Volume 10 by Bell, Clara, 1834-1927, Ebers, Georg, 1837-1898

The predictions of the prefect Titianus were fulfilled, for the Emperor's faults increased with years and the meaner side of his mind and nature came into sharper relief. Titianus and his wife led a retired life by lake Larius, far from the world, and both were baptized before they died. They never pined for the turmoil of a pleasure-seeking world or its dazzling show, for they had learnt to cherish in their own hearts all that is fairest in life.

It was the slave Mastor who brought to Titianus the news of the sovereign's death. Hadrian had given him his freedom before he died and had left him a handsome legacy.

The prefect gave him a piece of land to farm and continued in friendly relations with his Christian neighbor and his pretty daughter, who grew up among her father's co-religionists.

When Titianus had told his wife the melancholy news he added solemnly:

"A great sovereign is dead. The pettinesses which disfigured the man Hadrian will be forgotten by posterity, for the ruler Hadrian was one of those men whom Fate sets in the places they belong to, and who, true to their duty, struggle indefatigably to the end. With wise moderation he was so far master of himself as to bridle his ambition and to defy the blame and prejudice of all the Romans. The hardest, and perhaps the wisest, resolution of his life was to abandon the provinces which it would have exhausted the power of the Empire to retain. He travelled over every portion of his dominion within the limits he himself had set to it, shrinking from neither frost nor heat, and he tried to be as thoroughly acquainted with every portion of it as if the Empire were a small estate he had inherited. His duties as a sovereign forced him to travel, and his love of travel lightened the duty. He was possessed by a real passion to understand and learn everything. Even the Incomprehensible set no limits to his thirst for knowledge, but ever striving to see farther and to dig deeper than is possible to the mind of man, he wasted a great part of his mighty powers in trying to snatch aside the curtain which hides the destinies of the future. No one ever worked at so many secondary occupations as he, and yet no former Emperor ever kept his eye so unerringly fixed on the main task of his life, the consolidation and maintenance of the strength of the state and the improvement and prosperity of its citizens."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Incomprehensible set no limits to his thirst for knowledge You must admire it, every connoisseur must