, 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.
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