...
But now I babble again of that base servitude, which I would forget, but
cannot: for every measurement, bolt, ring, is in my brain, like a
burden: but it is past, it is past--and it was vanity.
* * * * *
Six months ago to-day it was finished: six months more protracted,
desolate, burdened, than all those sixteen years in which I built.
I wonder what a man--another man--some Shah, or Tsar, of that far-off
past, would say now of me, if eye could rest upon me! With what awe
would he certainly shrink before the wild majesty of these eyes; and
though I am not lunatic--for I am not, I am not--how would he fly me
with the exclamation: 'There is the very lunacy of Pride!'
For there would seem to him--it must be so--in myself, in all about me,
something extravagantly royal, touched with terror. My body has
fattened, and my girth now fills out to a portly roundness its broad
Babylonish girdle of crimson cloth, minutely gold-embroidered, and hung
with silver, copper and gold coins of the Orient; my beard, still black,
sweeps in two divergent sheaves to my hips, flustered by every wind; as
I walk through this palace, the amber-and-silver floor reflects in its
depths my low-necked, short-armed robe of purple, blue, and scarlet,
a-glow with luminous stones.
Pages:
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324