silver robe--because, say the gossips, the statue was indecent.
Not at all: it was to prevent recurrence of an incident in which
the sculptured Julia took a static part with a German student
afflicted with sex-mania.

I become, however, a trifle excursive, I think. If I do the
blame lies on those partisan writers to whom I have alluded.
They have a way of leading their incautious latter-day brethren
up the garden. They hint at flesh-eating lilies by the pond at
the path's end, and you find nothing more prone to sarcophagy
than harmless primulas. In other words, the beetle-browed
Lucretia, with the handy poison-ring, whom they promise you turns
out to be a blue-eyed, fair-haired, rather yielding little
darling, ultimately an excellent wife and mother, given to piety
and good works, used in her earlier years as a political
instrument by father and brother, and these two no worse than
masterful and ambitious men employing the political technique
common to their day and age.



% II

Messalina, Locusta, Lucretia, Theodora, they step aside in this
particular review of peccant women. Cleopatra, supposed to have
poisoned slaves in the spirit of scientific research, or perhaps
as punishment for having handed her the wrong lipstick, also is
set aside. It were supererogatory to attempt dealing with the
ladies mentioned in the Bible and the Apocrypha, such as Jael,
who drove the nail into the head of Sisera, or Judith, who cut