"Why should I be reticent about myself?" he asked. "I either don't talk or I talk as I am doing now. Perhaps it is a little odd."
"Do you talk to every one so intimately?"
"No, hardly to anybody. I once had a friend ... but he's dead. Tell me, I suppose you consider me morbid?"
"No, I don't think so."
"I shouldn't mind if you did. Oh, how beautiful it is here! Are you drinking Rome in with your very breath?"
"Which Rome?"
"The Rome of antiquity. Under where we are sitting is the Palace of Tiberius. I see him walking about there, with his tall, strong figure, with his large, searching eyes: he was very strong, he was very gloomy and he was a brute. He had no ideals. Farther down, over there, is the Palace of Caligula, a madman of genius. He built a bridge across the Forum to speak to Jupiter in the Capitol. That's a thing one couldn't do nowadays. He was a genius and a madman. When a man's like that, there's a good deal about him to admire."
"How can you admire an age of emperors who were brutes and mad?"
"Because I see their age before my eyes, in the past, like a dream."
"How is it possible that you don't see the present before you, with the problems of our own time, especially the eternal problem of poverty?"