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Rh the hero I love best is always the last one that I have read about.

We are all chained to Fortune's car; her triumphs over history are greater than Pompey's, as her wheel turns, never resting for a moment. She has as many phases as the moon, says Menelaus, in the words Sophocles puts into his mouth; and for those who are still in her first quarter, that is a comforting reflection.

I would sometimes say to myself: "What does all this matter, Breugnon? What to you are the glories of Rome, and the crimes and follies of these old rascals? You have your own faults and troubles to think of, why go out of your way to worry over those of people who have been dead and gone for eighteen hundred years? To a sober middle-class citizen of Clamecy, Cæsar, Antony, and their light-o'-love, Cleopatra, these Persian princes who murdered their sons and married their daughters, were extremely depraved people; the most virtuous thing they ever did was to die; so peace to their ashes!—but how can a respectable man find pleasure in reading about such insanities? Think of Alexander, who spent the treasures of a nation on the burial of his beautiful favorite, Ephestion, Are you not shocked by such extravagance?—It is bad enough to murder a lot of people, for men are