He had returned, as we know, with the plague in his company, along with many another strange creature of his folly; and when the people saw him publicly feeding his favourite horse Fleet with almonds and sweet grapes, wearing the animal's image in gold, and [196] finally building it a tomb, they felt, with some un-sentimental misgiving, that he might revive the manners of Nero .-- What if, in the chances of war, he should survive the protecting genius of that elder brother?
He was all himself to-day: and it was with much wistful curiosity that Marius regarded him.

For Lucius Verus was, indeed, but the highly expressive type of a class,--the true son of his father, adopted by Hadrian.

Lucius Verus the elder, also, had had the like strange capacity for misusing the adornments of life, with a masterly grace; as if such misusing were, in truth, the quite adequate occupation of an intelligence, powerful, but distorted by cynical philosophy or some disappointment of the heart.

It was almost a sort of genius, of which there had been instances in the imperial purple: it was to ascend the throne, a few years later, in the person of one, now a hopeful little lad at home in the palace; and it had its following, of course, among the wealthy youth at Rome, who concentrated no inconsiderable force of shrewdness and tact upon minute details of attire and manner, as upon the one thing needful.

Certainly, flowers were pleasant to the eye.
Such things had even their sober use, as making the outside of human life superficially attractive, and thereby promoting the first steps towards friendship and social amity.