“I’m not the man I was a year ago. I’m shaken. Father told me that the most wearing feature of his being Emperor was his recurring escapes from assassination. I had my first escape just after your audience with me. It jarred me horribly. The fool barely missed finishing me. The experience made me take precautions and so no other miscreant has come so near to doing for me. But the repetitions have grown monotonous. I always thought highly of your lad, and I’ve often wondered how he managed to get any sleep or swallow any food while he was King of the Grove, but I think immeasurably more of him since I’ve been through something faintly similar. He deserves the best of life and I hope he’ll get his heart’s desire and marry you at the end of your service.
“You see how enthusiastically I am on your side.
“If this were a question of judging a two-year-old filly I’d need no man’s advice and I’d listen to no man’s opinion. I’m better fitted to judge a horse than any man alive. It would be the same if it were a question of refereeing a sword-bout or a boxing-mill or a wrestling-match or anything of the kind. I know all about such things and I know that I am a judge superior to anybody on earth. I’m a born all-round athlete and everybody knows it and recognizes me as a past master.
“But as an Emperor, as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so. I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance in a position which I fail to fill adequately. They watch me like hawks, they expect to see me blunder, they raise eyebrows at each other, they exchange glances. It rattles me. I wish I had Alexander’s nerve. He was as young as I am and he brooked no opposition, but rammed his opinions down his councillors’ throats from the hour when he became King. But I haven’t his nerve, not by a long shot. I had as good teachers as he had, too. But, Hercules be good to me, I never could learn anything out of a book.
“As a charioteer, or a swordsman I’m as confident as a lion. As an Emperor I’m as cowardly as a jackal. It’s the effect of the prophecies and auguries and oracles and such. They all hint at my impairing the prosperity of the Republic or diminishing the power of the Empire. It gallies me when I see two old bald heads wink at each other; I know they are thinking: