“You are a bright spirit,” said Shakespeare, with a sigh. “I wish I had thought to work you up into a tragedy.”
“I’ve often wondered why you didn’t,” said Doctor Johnson. “He’d have made a superb tragedy, Nero would. I don’t believe there was any kind of a crime he left uncommitted. Was there, Emperor?”
“Yes. I never wrote an English dictionary,” returned the Emperor, dryly. “I’ve murdered everything but English, though.”
“I could have made a fine tragedy out of you,” said Shakespeare. “Just think what a dreadful climax for a tragedy it would be, Johnson, to have Nero, as the curtain fell, playing a violin solo.”
“Pretty good,” returned the Doctor. “But what’s the use of killing off your audience that way? It’s better business to let ’em live, I say. Suppose Nero gave a London audience that little musicale he provided at Queen Elizabeth’s Wednesday night. How many purely mortal beings, do you think, would have come out alive?”
“Not one,” said Shakespeare. “I was mighty glad that night that we were an immortal band. If it had been possible to kill us we’d have died then and there.”
“That’s all right,” said Nero, with a significant shake of his head. “As my friend Bacon makes Ingo say, ‘Beware, my lord, of jealousy.’ You never could play a garden hose, much less a fiddle.”
“What do you mean my attributing those words to Bacon?” demanded Shakespeare, getting red in the face.
“Oh, come now, William,” remonstrated Nero. “It’s all right to pull the wool over the eyes of the mortals. That’s what they’re there for; but as for us—we’re all in the secret here. What’s the use of putting on nonsense with us?”
“We’ll see in a minute what the use is,” retorted the Avonian. “We’ll have Bacon down here.” Here he touched an electric button, and Charon came in answer.