he Sun. The chapel was roomy and rich. There
was no statue--a black phallus merely, which had fallen from above, and
on which, if you looked closely, you could see the image of Elagabal,
the Sun.

The rumor of his beauty brought other soldiers that way, and the lad,
feeling that Rome was there, ceased to dance, strolling through pauses
of the worship, a troop of galli at his heels, surveying the intruders
with querulous, feminine eyes.

Presently a whisper filtered that the lad was Caracalla's son. There
were centurions there that remembered Semiamire, the lad's mother, very
well; they had often seen her, a superb creature with scorching eyes,
before whom fire had been carried as though she were empress. It was
she who had put it beyond Caracalla's power to violate that vestal when
he tried. She was his cousin; her life had been passed at court; it was
Macrin who had exiled her. And with the whisper filtered another--that
she was rich; that she had lumps of gold, which she would give gladly
to whomso aided in placing her Antonin on the throne. There were
gossips who said ill-natured things of this lady; who insinuated that
she had so many lovers that she herself could not tell who was the
father of her child; but the lumps of gold had a language of their own.
The disbanded army espoused the young priest's cause; there was a
skirmish, Macrin was killed, and Heliogabalus was emperor of Rome.

"I would never have written the life of this Antonin Impurissimus,"
said Lampridus, "were it not that he had predecessors." Even in Latin
the task was difficult. In English it is impossible. There are subjects
that permit of a hint, particularly if it be masked to the teeth, but
there are others that no art can drape. "The inexpressible does not
exist," Gautier remarked, when he finished a notorious romance, nor
does it; but even his pen would have balked had he tried it on
Heliogabalus.

In his work on the Caesars, Suetonius drew breath but once--he called
Nero a monster. Subsequently he must have regretted having done so, not
because Nero was not a monster, but because it was sufficient to
display the beast without adding a descriptive placard. In that was
Suetonius' advantage; he could describe. Nowadays a writer may not, or
at least not Heliogabalus. It is not merely that he was depraved, for
all of that lot were; it was that he made depravity a pursuit; and, the
purple favoring, carried it not only beyond the limits of the