“The vanquish'd must connive, or victory's self
Its own grave digs in the end.”
All the littleness of greatness, all those surroundings that to small minds stamp, if they do not constitute, greatness, are for him emptiness.
“To breathe applauses is to breathe that air
By breath of men defiled: I stand, and stood,
On the mountain-tops, breathing the breath of gods.”
There is another aspect to his character at which we must glance. We have called attention at the beginning to his jealous hatred of death. Life and death are to him constant enigmas, to which he sees no solution. The only, or at least the great, obstacle that he sees in the way of accomplishing his dream and passion of empire is death. No human foe he fears; but the fates. Time, he passionately says, is no friend of his. He has to build his empire in few years. He is running a constant race with time, and something seems to whisper to him ever that his years are few. In this, too, lies an humbling fact. He, like others, is human and subject to death. This inward struggle and rebellion against his humanity is constantly going on. The thought, What am I? What do I? Who am I? Whence come I? Where go I?—all these things for ever trouble him. He would be a god; but he finds his loftiest aspirations bounded by a wall of flesh, and beyond that—a blank.
With keen dramatic instinct and happy thought the author gives him the opportunity of answering for himself these questionings. He visits the temple at Jerusalem, and converses with the high-priest. The truth is unfolded to him, and the true God made known. He hesitates, and finally rejects the truth. It clashes with his purpose.
“O'er all the earth my empire shall be just,
Godlike my rule,”