of the
age find in them to disturb the least ofhis dreams?

Came, however, the Ides of March in B.C. 44; and the laugh once
more was with Karma,--the one great final laugher of the world.
Caesar essayed to be Chief of the Romans: he who is chief, let
him be the bridge;--this one, because of a few ludicrous personal
foibles, has broken down now under the hurry and thunder of the
marching cycles. The fact being that your true Chief aspires
only to the bridgehood; whereas this one overlooked that part of
it, intent on the chieftaincy.--And now, God have mercy on us!
there is to be all the round of wars and proscriptions and
massacres over again: _Roma caput mundi_ herself piteously
decapitate; and with every booby and popinjay rising in turn to
kick her about at his pleasure;--and here first comes Mark
Anthony to start the game, it seems.

Well; Mark Anthony managed wisely enough at that crisis; you
would almost have said, hearing him speak at Caesar's funeral,
that there was at least a ha'porth of brains hidden somewhere
within that particularly thick skull of his. Half an hour
changes him from a mere thing alive on sufferance--too foolish to
be worth bothering to kill--into the master of Rome. And yet
probably it was not brains that did it, but the force of genuine
feeling: he loved dead Caesar; he was trying now to be
cautious, for his own skin's sake: was repressing himself;--but
his feelings got the better of him,--and were catching,--
and set the mob on fire. Your lean and hungry ones; your
envious detractors; your thin maiden-auntish prig republican
philosophers:--all very wisely sheer off. Your grand resounding
Cicero,--_vox et praeterea almost nihil_ (he had yet to die and
show that it was _almost,_ not _quite,_) sheers off too, into the
country, there to busy himself with an essay on the _Nature of
the Gods_ (to contain, be sure, some fine eloquence), and with
making up his mind to attack Anthony on behalf of Republican
Freedom.--Anthony's next step is wise too: he appoints himself
Caesar's executor, gets hold of the estate, and proceeds to
squander it right and left buying up for himself doubtful
support.--All you can depend on is the quick coming-on of final
ruin and dismay: of all impossibilities, the most impossible is
to imagine Mark Anthony capable of averting it. As to Caesar's
heir, so nominated in the will--the persona from whom busy
Anthony has virtually stolen the estate,--no one gives