As I passed through one of the groves peopled with marble forms, I paused, I hardly knew why, in front of an admirable bust of the great Cæsar.
Bulger joined me, and there we stood, children of this late day, with our eyes uplifted to the face of him whose smallest word was once copied down on waxen tablet as if it were the utterance of a god.
I had always liked Cæsar.
We resembled each other in many ways.
We were both men of action.
I felt sorry for him now, that he should be forced to live, even in the shape of marble, among such dull and inactive people as the Slow Movers.
I told him so.
“And yet, Julius,” said I, “called of men the Great Cæsar, what a fortunate thing it is that thou art not living now, for thou wouldst be overcome with shame at finding everybody reading my adventures while the book which thou wrotest concerning Gaul lies mouldy and dust-covered on the shelves of the libraries!”
The following day, in passing that way again, and glancing up at great Cæsar’s face, I noticed that a smile had just started in the right corner of his mouth. So stolid had he become through his long residence among the Slow Movers that he had just begun to be amused by the remark I had made on the previous day.
Thoughts of home now arose in my mind.