the sword. Even this became insipid, as wanting one main element of misery
to the sufferer, and an indispensable condiment to the jaded palate of the
connoisseur, viz., a lingering duration. As a pleasant variety, therefore,
the tormentors were introduced with their various instruments of torture;
and many a dismal tragedy in that mode of human suffering was conducted in
the sacred presence during the emperor's hours of amiable relaxation.

The result of these horrid indulgences was exactly what we might suppose,
that even such scenes ceased to irritate the languid appetite, and yet
that without them life was not endurable. Jaded and exhausted as the sense
of pleasure had become in Caligula, still it could be roused into any
activity by nothing short of these murderous luxuries. Hence, it seems,
that he was continually tampering and dallying with the thought of murder;
and like the old Parisian jeweller Cardillac, in Louis XIV.'s time, who
was stung with a perpetual lust for murdering the possessors of fine
diamonds--not so much for the value of the prize (of which he never hoped
to make any use), as from an unconquerable desire of precipitating himself
into the difficulties and hazards of the murder,--Caligula never failed to
experience (and sometimes even to acknowledge) a secret temptation to any
murder which seemed either more than usually abominable, or more than
usually difficult. Thus, when the two consuls were seated at his table, he
burst out into sudden and profuse laughter; and, upon their courteously
requesting to know what witty and admirable conceit might be the occasion
of the imperial mirth, he frankly owned to them, and doubtless he did not
improve their appetites by this confession, that in fact he was laughing,
and that he could not but laugh, (and then the monster laughed
immoderately again,) at the pleasant thought of seeing them both headless,
and that with so little trouble to himself, (_uno suo nutu_,) he
could have both their throats cut. No doubt he was continually balancing
the arguments for and against such little escapades; nor had any person a