Dead letters

by Maurice Baring

You demand a full account of my new life, and although it is now only three weeks ago that I arrived, I feel as if many years had passed, so crowded have they been with incident, experience, and even tragedy. I will not anticipate, but will begin at the beginning.

As soon as my appointment was settled I was commanded to come to the Palace and to take up my new duties at once. I arrived early one morning about three weeks ago. I was shown the room I was to occupy, and the library where I was to work—which is magnificent—and briefly instructed in my duties, which are not heavy. I was to have my meals with the Emperor’s Secretaries.

The first day of my arrival I saw no one, but the second morning, just after I had settled down to my work—I have two assistants—a man walked into the library and asked in a hesitating manner for a Greek dictionary.

“I am sorry to trouble you,” he added, apologetically, “but I am a wretched speller.”

I became aware—why exactly I cannot tell, since he was dressed in a loose robe and slippers—that it was the Emperor. He looked at me furtively, fixing his glance on the edge of my toga, so much so that I began to think it must be dirty. He is badly made, his head looks as if it might fall off his shoulders, his features are too big for his face, and his hand shakes. In spite of all this there is about him a mournful dignity—an air of intelligence, melancholy, and authority. I gave him the dictionary and he looked out the word he wanted, but my presence seemed to embarrass him, and he fumbled, and was a long time before he could find what he was seeking. At last he found it and returned me the book with a nervous cough. As he left the room he asked me to dine with him that night. It would be quite informal, he said, only himself and the Empress.

I looked forward to the evening with fear and curiosity, and when at the appointed hour I found myself in the ante-room I was trembling with nervousness. Presently the Emperor entered the room and said the Empress would be down directly. He seemed to be as shy as I was myself. After a prolonged silence he remarked that the month of October, which had just begun, was the pleasantest month in the year. After this he bade me be seated, relapsed into silence, and did not seem to notice my presence. He stared at the ceiling and seemed to be engrossed in his thoughts. Nearly twenty minutes passed in uncomfortable silence, and then the Empress entered with a jingle of chains and bangles. She smiled on me graciously, and we went into the dining room.

I had heard much about the beauty of the Empress, and the accounts were scarcely exaggerated. Her face was childish and flower-like, her hair and complexion dazzlingly fair, her smile radiant, her expression guileless and innocent, and in her brown eyes there danced a bright and delightful mischief.

We reclined, and course after course of rich and spicy dishes were brought. We began with sturgeon and fried eels, followed by roast sucking-pig, wild boar, calf, wild peacock, turkey, and various kinds of game. The Emperor helped himself copiously and partook twice of every course. The Empress toyed with her food and sipped a little boiling water out of a cup. The Emperor did not speak at all, but the Empress kept up a running conversation on the topics of the day—the games, the new port of Ostia, the Emperor’s new improved alphabet, and the progress of the History of Etruria, which he is writing in Greek.

“You will be a great help to him,” she said, talking as if he were not present. “There is nobody at all literary at Court just now, and he loves talking about literature. I am so anxious he should go on with his writing—you must encourage him. I do what I can, but I am not up to his scholarship and science; I am only an ignorant woman.”

Towards the end of dinner, Britain having been mentioned, the Emperor discoursed at length on the native religion of that insignificant island. The people there, he said, held the oak tree in great reverence and sacrificed to a god who had certain affinities with the Etrurian Moon-god; he intended to devote a chapter of his Etrurian history to a comparison between the two religions; and he explained at enormous length, and with a wealth of illustration which revealed untold erudition, their likenesses and differences.