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the emperor’s vision
3
On the way the emperor talked cheerfully with his
friends, and, therefore, no one noticed the infinite
silence and stillness of the night. Not until they
had reached the highest part of Capitolium and
stood on the empty spot intended for the new
temple, was it revealed to them that something
unusual was taking place.
This could not be a night like all others, for upon
the edge of the cliff they saw the most marvelous
being. At first they thought it was an old
twisted olive trunk, afterwards they thought that an
antique stone-image from the temple of Jupiter had
wandered out on the cliff. At last it seemed to
them that it could be none other than the old
sibyl.
Any thing so old, so weather-beaten and so
gigantic, they had never seen. This old woman was
frightful. If the emperor had not been there, they would
all have fled home to their beds.
" It is she," they whispered to each other, "who
numbers as many years as there are grains of
sand on her native shore. Why has she come out
of her cavern on this particular night ? What does
she* augur the emperor and the empire, she who
writes her prophesies on the leaves of the trees and
knows that the wind conveys the word of the
Oracle to the one who is in need of it ? "
They were so terrified that they would have thrown
themselves on their knees with their foreheads
towards the earth, had the sibyl stirred. But she sat
so still she appeared to be lifeless. She sat
crouching on the verge of the cliff, and, shading her eyes
with her hand, she peered out into the night.
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