XVIII
NERO DISCUSSES JAZZ
I shuddered as the city editor announced my assignment. True, I had tackled departed desperadoes and undesirable citizens whom I feared about as much in the spirit as in the flesh, but they were different. None of these could be such a formidable customer to interview as an ex-emperor who was notorious for his callous cruelties.
But duty is duty, and I donned my bullet-proof vest, put a revolver in my hip-pocket with a bottle of non-spirituous nerve tonic which a kind physician prescribed for me, and sallied forth to my waiting plane.
Five minutes later I was sitting calmly in the presence of the former imperial tyrant. The ordeal of introduction I had so much dreaded proved to be nothing. I had found the ex-emperor as approachable as a presidential candidate two months before the convention and as willing to talk for publication as a grand opera star who’s just lost another $10,000 necklace.
Could this be the old monster I had read about, I wondered, as overflowing with welcome he invited me to make myself thoroughly at home.
“What do you want me to talk about?” he asked. “Modern music and musicians? Delighted. Then you still regard me as an expert? I am gratified to hear it. I had feared that some slanderous stories that were circulated might have prejudiced you earth folk against me.
“Perhaps a few words of explanation might not be amiss. You have heard, no doubt, about the time when, as the popular phrase has it, I fiddled while Rome burned? The opposition made a good deal of that circumstance at the next election. They said I ought to have got out and hustled with the firemen, regardless of the fact that I did not belong to their union. Every man to his trade, I say. The firemen played on the flames and I played on the violin.
“Possibly, on looking back now that it is all over, I might have made a happier selection of the composition I performed on that occasion. It was entitled ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’ a forerunner of a popular piece which I believe is not entirely unknown in your own country today. But that was a mere bit of thoughtlessness.
“The extent of that conflagration, also, has been much exaggerated. It was confined to a few old garages in the suburbs upon which, oddly enough, I had taken out insurance only a couple of days before. One of those remarkable coincidences which do occasionally occur in real life.
“My political enemies tried to make a good deal out of it, but I am glad to say they were unable to prove anything. My candidates for the Forum were elected by the largest majorities on record. And if that isn’t vindication, what is?”