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Book, page 11 / 298 books. Looking across the road, he saw, to his ZULEIKA DOBSON 11 amazement, great beads of perspiration glisten- ing on the brows of those Emperors. He trem- bled, and hurried away. That evening, in Com- mon Room, he told what he had seen; and no amount of polite scepticism would convince him that it was but the hallucination of one who had been reading too much Mommsen. He persisted that he had seen what he described. It was not until two days had elapsed that some credence was accorded him. Yes, as the landau rolled by, sweat started from the brows of the Emperors. They, at least, foresaw the peril that was overhanging Oxford, and they gave such warning as they could. Let that be remembered to their credit. Let that in- cline us to think more gently of them. In their lives we know, they were infamous, some of them -- "nihil non commiserunt stupri, saevitiae, im- pietatis." But are they too little punished, after all? Here in Oxford, exposed eternally and in- exorably to heat and frost, to the four winds that lash them and the rains that wear them away, they are expiating, in effigy, the abominations of their pride and cruelty and lust. Who were lechers, they are without bodies; who were ty- rants, they are crowned never but with crowns of snow; who made themselves even with the gods, they are by American visitors frequently mistaken for the Twelve Apostles. It is but a little way down the road that the two Bishops perished for 12 ZULEIKA DOBSON their faith, and even now we do never pass the
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