“Justice!—­yes, I will exercise justice, oh, sublime and virtuous hero, going forth to murder—­a dagger hidden in your bosom!  I thank you for that lesson!

“Pride of the Museum!—­you lead me to the source whence all your corruption flows.  It is that famous nursery of learning where you, too, were bred up.  There, yes, there they cherish the heresy that makes the gods into puppets of straw, and the majesty of the throne into an owl for pert and insignificant birds to peck at.  Thence comes the doctrine that teaches men and women to laugh at virtue and to break their word.  There, where in other days noble minds, protected by the overshadowing favor of princes, followed out great ideas, they now teach nothing but words—­ empty, useless words.  I saw and said that yesterday, and now I know it for certain—­every poison shaft that your malice has aimed at me was forged in the Museum.”

He paused for breath, and then continued, with a contemptuous laugh: 

“If the justice which you rate higher than logic were to take its course, nothing would be juster than to make an end this day of this hot-bed of corruption.  But your unlearned fellow-citizens shall taste of my justice, too.  You yourself will be prevented by the beasts in the Circus from looking on at the effect your warning words have produced.  But as yet you are alive, and you shall hear what the experiences are which make the severest measures the highest justice.

“What did I hope to find, and what have I really found?  I heard the Alexandrians praised for their hospitality—­for the ardor with which they pursue learning—­for the great proficiency of their astronomers—­for the piety which has raised so many altars and invented so many doctrines; and, lastly, for the beauty and fine wit of their women.

“And this hospitality!  All that I have known of it is a flood of malicious abuse and knavish scoffing, which penetrated even to the gates of this temple, my dwelling.  I came here as emperor, and treason pursued me wherever I went—­even into my own apartments; for there you stand, whom a barbarian had to hinder from stabbing me with the knife of the assassin.  And your learning?  You have heard my opinion of the Museum.  And the astrologers of this renowned observatory?  The very opposite of all they promised me has come to pass.

“Religion?  The people, of whom you know as little from the musty volumes of the Museum as of ’Ultima Thule’—­the people indeed practice it.  The old gods are necessary to them.  They are the bread of life to them.  But instead of those you have offered them sour, unripe fruit, with a glittering rind-from your own garden, of your own growing.  The fruit of trees is a gift from Nature, and all that she brings forth has some good in it; but what you offer to the world is hollow and poisonous.  Your rhetoric gives it an attractive exterior, and that, too, comes from the Museum.  There they are shrewd enough to create new gods, which start up out of the earth like mushrooms.  If it should only occur to them, they would raise murder to the dignity of god of gods, and you to be his high-priest.”