“I really believe the rascal has consoled himself already, and found a new mate.  Let us, too, follow the precept of Horace, so far as we may, and enjoy the present day.  The poet may let the future go as it will, but I cannot, for, unfortunately, I am the Emperor.”

“And Rome may thank the gods that you are,” replied Antinous.

“What happy phrases the boy hits upon sometimes,” said Hadrian with a laugh, and he stroked the lad’s brown curls.  “Now till noon I must work with Phlegon and Titianus, whom I am expecting, and then perhaps we may find something to laugh at.  Ask the tall sculptor there behind the screens, at what hour Balbilla is to sit to him for her bust.  We must also inspect the architect’s work, and that of the Alexandrian artists by daylight; that, their zeal has well deserved.”

Hadrian retired to the room where his private secretary had ready for him the despatches and papers for Rome and the provinces, which the Emperor was required to read and to sign.  Antinous remained alone in the sitting-room, and for an hour he continued to gaze at the ships which came to anchor in the harbor, or sailed out of the roads, and amused himself with watching the swift boats which swarmed round the larger vessels, like wasps round ripe fruit.  He listened to the songs of the sailors, and the music of the flute-players, to the measured beat of the oars, which came up from the triremes in the private harbor of the Emperor as they went out to sea.  Even the pure blue of the sky and the warmth of the delicious morning were a pleasure to him, and he asked himself whether the smell of tar, which pervaded the seaport, were agreeable or not.

Presently as the sun mounted in the sky, its bright sphere dazzled him; he left the window with a yawn, stretched himself on a couch, and stared absently up at the ceiling of the room without thinking of the subject which the faded picture on it was intended to represent.

Idleness had long since grown to be the occupation of his life; but accustomed to it as he was, he was sometimes conscious of its dark attendant shadow ennui—­as of a disagreeable and intrusive interruption to the enjoyment of life.  Generally in such lonely hours of idle reverie his thoughts reverted to his belongings in Bithynia, of whom he never dared to speak before the Emperor, or perhaps of the hunting excursions he had made with Hadrian, of the slaughtered game, of the fish he—­an experienced angler—­had caught, or such like.  What the future might bring him troubled him not, for to the love of creativeness, to ambition—­to all, in short, that bore any resemblance to a passionate excitement his soul had, so far, remained a stranger.  The admiration which was universally excited by his beauty gave him no pleasure, and many a time he felt as though it was not worth while to stir a limb or draw a breath.  Almost everything he saw was indifferent to him excepting a kind word from the lips of the Emperor, whom he regarded as great above all other men, whom he feared as Destiny incarnate, and to whom he felt himself bound as intimately as the flower to the tree, the blossom that must die when the stem is broken, on which it flaunts as an ornament and a grace.