pitch of ferocity.

3. By this speech the emperor was excited to most vehement wrath; and as
he began to reply to it he grew more indignant, reproaching the whole
nation in bitter language, as unmindful of kindness, and ungrateful. But
after a time he became pacified, and inclined to a milder view of the
case, when suddenly, as if he had been stricken from heaven, his
breathing and his voice ceased, and his countenance appeared bloodshot,
and in a moment the blood burst forth, and a deadly sweat broke forth
over his whole body; and to save him from falling down in the sight of a
number of low-born persons, he was led by his servants into one of the
private chambers in the interior of the palace.

4. When he was placed on his bed, breathing with difficulty, though the
vigour of his intellect was not as yet at all diminished, he recognized
those who stood around, having been collected by the chamberlains with
great promptitude, to prevent any of them being suspected of having
murdered him. And as on account of the fever which was racking his
bowels it was necessary to open a vein, yet no surgeon could be found,
because he had dispersed them all over different districts to cure the
soldiers among whom a dangerous pestilence was raging.

5. At last, however, one was procured; but though he punctured a vein
over and over again, he could not produce a single drop of blood, while
all the time his bowels were burning with the intensity of his fever; or
(as some fancied) because his limbs were wholly dried up in consequence
of some of the passages, which we now call haemorrhoidal, were closed up
and crusted over through the severity of the cold.

6. The emperor, from the exceeding violence of his agony, felt that the
moment of his death was at hand; and attempted to say something, and to
give some orders, as was indicated by a sobbing, which shook his whole
frame, a gnashing of the teeth, and a series of violent gestures with
his arms, resembling those of boxers with the caestus: at last he became
exhausted, and covered all over with livid spots, and after a severe
struggle he expired, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, having reigned
twelve years all but a hundred days.

VII.

Sec. 1. This is a seasonable opportunity to do as we have often done
before, namely, to retrace from the original appearance of the father
of this emperor down to the time of his own death, all his actions, just
touching on them cursorily with a