is possible. Her fishy blood can never be made to boil.
For a strong passion or a bold crime she was always too cowardly. She
is too vain to forego admiration and too paltry to reciprocate it.
Since she accompanied her husband on his campaign she has become quite
virtuous. Ha, ha, ha! because she was obliged! Even as the devil fasts
when he has nothing to eat. Because I kept her lover a prisoner."

"Anicius, the son of Boethius? I heard of it."

"Yes, he. When in Italy Antonina again clung to her husband and shared
his fame and his misfortunes. And since that time she is a very
Penelope! When she returned here, what did the goose do? She reproached
me with having enticed her from the path of virtue! and swore that she
would save Anicius from my toils. And she succeeds, the snake! She
opens the gates of conscience and weans my unfaithful chamberlain more
and more from me--of course only to keep him for herself."

"So you cannot imagine," said Cethegus, "that any woman can try to save
a soul?"

"Without profit? No. But at the same time she deceives herself and him
by pious speeches. And oh! how gladly the youth allows himself to be
saved by this youthful blooming saint from the arms of the faded
woman--who is wasted before her time! Ha!" she added passionately,
starting from her seat, "how pitiable that the body must succumb from
fatigue before the soul has half satisfied its thirst for life! And to
live is to rule, to hate, and to love!"

"You seem insatiable in these arts and enjoyments."

"Yes," cried Theodora, "and I am proud of it. Must I indeed leave the
richly-spread table of existence, must I leave this imperial throne,
with all my ardent love of joy and power still unquenched? Shall I only
sip a few more drops? Oh, Nature is a miserable blunderer! Once in many
thousand ages she creates, amid a host of cripples, ugly in body and
weak in mind, a soul and body like mine, perfect and strong, and full
of the longing to live and to enjoy for an eternity. And, when only six
lustres have passed, when I have scarcely sipped of the full cup
offered to me. Nature dries up the spring of life! A curse upon the
envy of the gods! But men can envy too, and envy changes them into
demons. Others shall not enjoy when I can do so no longer! Others shall
no more laugh when I must writhe in agony all night long! Antonina
shall not rejoice in her youth with the false man who was once mine and
yet could think of another, or of vi