entire discourseAh.Empress Faustina’sI could well imagine. He could imagine nothing. Angry, but perfectly controlled, I took my leave of him.
How could a fool like that understand? He could not! How could he know what it was like, when, after nearly thirty years of respectability and peace, my life changed so horribly—nay, it ended with the b****y tread of pestilence within the walls of my estate—for indeed there were scarlet footprints found outside the chambers of the stricken—and one by one they died, first my beloved wife, Simonis, then all three of my sons—the eldest almost a man—followed by my two daughters, one by one perishing, their sheets found soaked in scarlet, their bodies covered with inexplicable wounds, their throats having somehow grown gangrenous under the chin, as if th
