The Emperor
THE EMPEROR, Part 1. By Georg Ebers Volume 4. CHAPTER XV. After the Emperor's body-slave had started up to go to the aid of Selene, who was attacked by his sovereign's dog, something had happened to him which he could not forget; he had received an impression which he could not wipe out, and words and tones had stirred his mind and soul which incessantly echoed in them, so that it was in a preoccupied and half- dreamy way that he had done his master those little services which he was accustomed to perform every morning, briskly and with complete attention. Summer and winter Mastor was accustomed to leave his master's bedroom before sunrise to prepare everything that Hadrian could need when he rose
then with a little splutter from the cabinet, another picture
appeared.
This was of a great open space, the most desolate and lonely stretch
of country that could well be imagined, a broad, open plain that
stretched on for miles and miles, perfectly flat, treeless and
uninhabited. The wind apparently was blowing violently, judging from
the way it tossed Edestone's hair about as, hatless, he walked back
and forth in the near foreground, shading his eyes from the sun with
his hand while he looked into the lens and called his directions to
the man who was working the camera.
"That disreputable-looking individual is myself," he confessed. "My
hat had blown away, a circumstance quite inconvenient at the time, but
not without a certain element of present interest, as showing that a
high wind was blowing at that time."
Behind him in the middle distance was a track and cradle similar to
the one shown in the first picture. The machine in the cabinet buzzed,
and clicked, and made a noise like that of a small boy rattling a
stick along a picket fence. A draught from some open window blowing
against the linen screen caused the flat, deserted plain to undulate
like the waves of the sea. The horizon bobbed up and down, showing
first a great expanse of sky, and then the foreground ran up to
infinity. The cradle was seen first at the right, and then at the left
of the picture. The clouds in the sky kept jumping about, as if the
THE EMPEROR, Part 1. By Georg Ebers Volume 4. CHAPTER XV. After the Emperor's body-slave had started up to go to the aid of Selene, who was attacked by his sovereign's dog, something had happened to him which he could not forget; he had received an impression which he could not wipe out, and words and tones had stirred his mind and soul which incessantly echoed in them, so that it was in a preoccupied and half- dreamy way that he had done his master those little services which he was accustomed to perform every morning, briskly and with complete attention. Summer and winter Mastor was accustomed to leave his master's bedroom before sunrise to prepare everything that Hadrian could need when he rose