Page:Colas breugnon.djvu/286

272 and trembles, for in it he seems to hear his own voice rising from the tomb.

Now that you are dead, great Cyrus and Alexander, how near you both seem to me; do I dream? or are they really there? I pinch myself to find out if I am awake, yes, there on the table by my side are two coins which I dug up in my vineyard last year, with the profiles of bearded Commodus dressed as Hercules, and Crispina Augusta, with her heavy chin and her shrewish nose.—"This is no dream," say I; "for here is Rome between my thumb and forefinger."

My greatest pleasure was to lose myself in reflections on moral issues; to raise once more, questions long settled by force; should I cross the Rubicon,—or not? I could never make up my mind! I fought Brutus and Caesar in turn; changed my opinion and argued on either side with so much eloquence that I could not tell what I believed. In this way the subject takes possession of you, as you give and take, strike out and hit back, till at last you are transfixed by your own blade! Did you ever hear of such an idea? But it all comes of reading Plutarch, with his smooth tongue, and pleasant way of calling you" my friend "! He gets you first on one side and then on the other; and has as many points of view as he has stories to tell you; so that