PILGRIM. I think so, certainly.

STRANGER. Caesar! You're Caesar!

PILGRIM. I used to be; but I am no longer.

TEMPTER. Ha ha! Imperial acquaintance. Really! But tell us, tell us!

PILGRIM. You shall hear. Now I've a right to speak, for my penance
is at an end. When we met at a certain doctor's house, I was shut
up there as a madman and supposed to be suffering from the illusion
that I was Caesar. Now the Stranger shall hear the truth of the
matter: I never believed it, but I was forced by scruples of
conscience to put a good face on it. ... A friend of mine, a bad
friend, had written proof that I was the victim of a misunderstanding;
but he didn't speak when he should have, and I took his silence as
a request not to speak either-and to suffer. Why did I? Well, in my
youth I was once in great need. I was received as a guest in a
house on an island far out to sea by a man who, in spite of unusual
gifts, had been passed over for promotion--owing to his senseless
pride. This man, by solitary brooding on his lot, had come to hold
quite extraordinary views about himself. I noticed it, but I said
nothing. One day this man's wife told me that he was sometimes
mentally unbalanced; and then thought he was Julius Caesar. For
many years I kept this secret conscientiously, for I'm not
ungrateful by nature. But life's tricky. It happened a few years
later that this Caesar laid rough hands on my most intimate fate.
In anger at this I betrayed the secret of his Caesar mania and made
my erstwhile benefactor such a laughing stock, that his existence