So I do not care whether these memoirs are authentic or not. They convince me that they contain important verities. Basta! I had written this and left it to rest a week or two, to see if there was anything I wished to add.
No sooner had I concluded that I was satisfied, than I received a telephone call. I recognised the voice at once. It was the Count. He reminded me of a bargain we had not made: that he should receive seventy-five per cent of translation rights, and twenty per cent of my English royalties. When I told him I had no memory of this, and had anyway thought him dead, he laughed.
"I have given Tiberius to drink of my elixir," he said. "Why should you suppose that either he or I can die?"
I had no answer to that. He promises to appear at the publication party. We shall see. Book One
Chapter One
That I relish dryness is not strange: I have campaigned too many years in the rains of the Rhine and Danube valleys. I have marched miles, ankle-deep, through mud, and slept in tents soaked through by morning. Yet my relish for what is dry is of another nature: I detest sentiment or displays of feeling; I detest acting. I detest self-indulgence, and that emotion in which one eye does not weep but observes the effect of tears on those who watch. I take pleasure in language which is precise, hard and cruel. This has made me a difficult and uncomfortable person. My presence makes my stepfather, the Princeps, uneasy. I have known this since I was a youth. For years I regretted it, for I sought his approval, even perhaps his love. Then I realised I could never have either of these: he responded to the false spontaneous charm of Marcellus, as he does now to that of his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, who are also my stepsons.