Palatine to the Vestal virgins. He spared no effort, for he well realised
that human omnipotence, the mastery of mankind and the world, lay in that
reunion of sovereignty, in being both king and priest, emperor and pope.
All the sap of a mighty race, all the victories achieved, and all the
favours of fortune yet to be garnered, blossomed forth in Augustus, in a
unique splendour which was never again to shed such brilliant radiance.
He was really the master of the world, amidst the conquered and pacified
nations, encompassed by immortal glory in literature and in art. In him
would seem to have been satisfied the old intense ambition of his people,
the ambition which it had pursued through centuries of patient conquest,
to become the people-king. The blood of Rome, the blood of Augustus, at
last coruscated in the sunlight, in the purple of empire. And the blood
of Augustus, of the divine, triumphant, absolute sovereign of bodies and
souls, of the man in whom seven centuries of national pride had
culminated, was to descend through the ages, through an innumerable
posterity with a heritage of boundless pride and ambition. For it was
fatal: the blood of Augustus was bound to spring into life once more and
pulsate in the veins of all the successive masters of Rome, ever haunting
them with the dream of ruling the whole world. And later on, after the
decline and fall, when power had once more become divided between the
king and the priest, the popes--their hearts burning with the red,
devouring blood of their great forerunner--had no other passion, no other
policy, through the centuries, than that of attaining to civil dominion,
to the totality of human power.

But Augustus being dead, his palace having been closed and consecrated,
Pierre saw that of Tiberius spring up from the soil. It had stood where
his feet now rested, where the beautiful evergreen oaks sheltered him. He
pictured it with courts, porticoes, and halls, both substantial and
grand, despite the gloomy bent of the emperor who betook himself far from