by death, that would be the best remedy. You poor
souls will have a bad time now, for the sun of my life has lost its light
and the trees by the way-side have lost their verdure."

When he was alone once more he sat staring into vacancy and muttered to
himself:

"All mankind should mourn with me for if I had been asked yesterday how
perfect a beauty might be bestowed on one of their race I could have
pointed proudly to you, my faithful boy and have said, 'Beauty like that
of the gods.' Now the crown is cut off from the trunk of the palm and the
maimed thing can only be ashamed of its deformity; and if all humanity
were but one man it would look like one who has had his right eye torn
out. I will not look on the monsters, lean and fat, that they may not
spoil my taste for the true type! Oh faithful, lovable, beautiful boy!
What a blind, mad fool have you been! And yet I cannot blame your
madness. You have pierced my soul with the deepest thrust of all and yet
I cannot even be angry with you. Superhuman! godlike was your faithful
devotion. Aye, indeed, it was!" As he thus spoke he rose from his seat
and went on resolutely and decidedly:

"Here I stretch out this my right hand-hear me, ye Immortals! Every city
in the Empire shall raise an altar to Antinous, and the friend of whom
you have robbed me I will make your equal and companion. Receive him
tenderly, oh, ye undying rulers of the world! Which among you can boast
of beauty greater than his? and which of you ever displayed so much
goodness and faithfulness as your new associate?"

This vow seemed to have given Hadrian some comfort. For above half an
hour he paced his tent with a firmer tread, then he desired that
Heliodorus his secretary might be called.

The Greek wrote what his sovereign dictated. This was nothing less than
that henceforth the world should worship a new divinity in the person of
Antinous.

At noonday a messenger in breathless haste came to say that the body of
the Bithynian had been found. Thousands flocked to see the corpse, and
among them Balbilla, who had behaved like a distracted creature when she
heard to what an end her idol had come. She had rushed up and down the
river-bank, among the citizens and fishermen, dressed in black mourning
robes and with her hair flying about her. The Egyptians had compared her
to the mourning Isis seeking the body of her beloved husband, Osiris. She
was beside herself with grief, and her companion implored h