He did it; and the feet of his soul were indeed washed in the blood of his heart.  He said no word; he divorced Vipsania and explained nothing.  But for months afterwards, if he should chance to meet her, or see her in the street far off, he could not hide the fact that his eyes filled with tears.—­Then Rome in its own kindly way took upon itself the duty or pleasure of helping him out a little:  gossip got to work to soothe the ache of his wound.  “Vipasania,” said gossip;—­“you are well rid of her; she was far from being all that you thought her.”  Probably he believed nothing of it; but the bitterness lay in its being said.  A shy man is never popular.  His shyness passes for pride, and people hate him for it.  Tiberius was very shy.  So society was always anxious to take down his pride a little.  The truth was, he was humble to the verge of self-distrust.

He did his best for Julia:  lived under the same roof with her for a few agonized months, and discovered what everyone knew or suspected about her.  The cup of his grief was now quite full; and indeed, worse things a man could hardly suffer.  Austere, reserved, and self-controlled as he was, at sight of Vipsania he could not hide his tears.  But it is written: 

"Before the eyes can see, they must become incapable of tears."

—­He was the butt of Roman gossip:  in all rancorous mouths because of the loved Vipsania; in all tattling mouths because of the loathed Julia; laughed at on both accounts; sympathized with by nobody; hearing all whispers, and fearfully sensitive to them.  But

     "Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness."

The storm was upon him; the silence was ahead; he was rocked and shaken and stunned by the earthquakes and thunders of Initiation:  when a man has to be hopeless, and battered, and stripped of all things:  a naked soul afflicted with fiery rains and torments; and to have no pride to back him; and no ambition to back him; and no prospect before him at all, save such as can be seen with the it may be unopened eyes of faith.  This is the way Tiberius endured his trials:—­

All Rome knew what Julia was, except Augustus.  So it is said; and perhaps truly; for here comes in the mystery of human duality:  a thing hard enough to understand in ourselves, that are common humanity; how much harder the variety that appears in one such as Augustus!  You may say, He must have known.  Well, there was the Adept Soul; that, I doubt not, would have known.  But perhaps it is that those who have all knowledge at their beck and call, have the power to know or not know what they will?—­to know what shall help, not to know what shall hinder their work?  Julia was not to be saved:  was, probably, tainted with madness like so many of her descendants:—­then what the Adept Soul could not forfend, why would the human personality, the warn-hearted father, be aware of?