Overhead, in the dimming, violet arch of the sky, one or two faint stars were beginning to twinkle.
"Play to life's end this wicked witless game And you will win what knaves and fools call Fame!" repeated the general, leaning out from the stone work of the window-casing in order to catch the cool air of the court.

"Yes, fame, the fame of a Xerxes; perhaps the fame of a Hannibal--no, I wrong the Carthaginian, for he at least struck for his country.

And what is it all worth, after all?
Does Agamemnon feel that his glory makes the realm of Hades more tolerable?
Does not Homer set forth Achilles as a warrior with renown imperishable?
And yet, 'Mock me not,' he makes the shade of Achilles say; 'Better to be the hireling of a stranger and serve a man of mean estate, whose living is but small, than be the monarch over all those dead and gone.'" The general leaned yet farther out, and looked upward.

"These were the stars that twinkled over the Troy of Priam; these were the stars that shone on Carthage when she sent forth her armies and her fleets, and nigh drove the Greeks from Sicily; and these are the stars which will shine when Rome is as Troy and Carthage.

And I--I am an atom, a creature of chance, thrown out of the infinite to flash like a shooting star for a moment across a blackened firmament and then in the infinite to expire.