I ever find the reality."

"The balance of difference, which is to the disadvantage of reality,"
answered Hadrian, "stands not so much to its discredit, as to the credit
of the eager and beautifying power of your youthful imagination. I--I--"
and the Emperor stroked his beard and gazed out into the distance. "I
learn by experience that the older I grow, the more often I find it
possible so to imagine men, places, and things that I have not seen as
that when I meet them in real life for the first time, I feel justified
in fancying that I have known them long since, visited them, and beheld
them with my bodily eyes. Here, for instance, I feel as if I saw nothing
new, but only gazed once more at what has long been familiar. But that is
no wonder, for I know my Strabo, and have heard and read a hundred
accounts of this city. Still there are many things which are quite
strange to me, and yet as they come before me make me feel as if I had
seen or known them long ago."

"I have felt something like that," said Antinous. "Can our souls have
ever lived in other bodies, and sometimes recall the impressions made in
that former existence?

"Favorinus once told me that some great philosopher, Plato, I think,
asserts that before we are born our souls are wafted about in the
firmament that they may contemplate the earth on which they are destined
subsequently to dwell. Favorinus says too--"

"Favorinus!" cried Hadrian, evasively. "That graceful elocutionist has
plenty of skill in giving new and captivating forms to the thoughts of
the great philosophers; but he has not been able to surprise the secret
of his own soul--besides, he talks too much, and he cannot dispense with
the excitement of life."

"Still you have recognized the phenomenon, but you disapprove of
Favorinus' explanation of it?"

"Yes, for I have met men and things as old acquaintances which never saw
the light till long after I was born. Possibly my own interpretation may
not adapt itself to the consciousness of all--but in myself, I know for
certain, there dwells a mysterious something which stirs and works in me
independently of myself, which enters into me, and takes its departure at
its will. Call it as you will, my Daimon, or even my Genius--the name
matters not. Nor will this 'something' always come at my bidding, while
it often possesses me when I least expect it. In those moments when it
stirs within me, I am master of much which is peculiar to the experie