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Ah, my gracious Emperor!

Oh ribald scoffer at all sacred things! And this must I endure—to hear your croaking tongue the instant I leave my library to breathe the fresh morning air!

[He comes nearer.

Know you what I hold under my left arm? No, you do not know. 'Tis a polemic against you, blasphemous and foolish Heraclius!

What, my Emperor,—against me?

Yes, a treatise against you. A treatise with which my indignation has this very night inspired me. Think you I could be other than wroth at your most unseemly behaviour yesterday? How strange was the licence you allowed yourself in the lecture-hall, in my hearing, and that of many other earnest men? Had we not to listen for hours together to the shameful fables about the gods which you must needs retail? How dared you repeat such fictions? Were they not lies, from first to last?

Ah, my Emperor, if you call that lying, then both Ovid and Lucian were liars.

What else? Oh, I cannot express the indignation that seized me when I understood whither