Julia retired presently, and returned soon with her pet
dwarf Cenopas. She stood him on a large, round table, and the guests
greeted him with loud laughter as he looked down. He had a hard,
unlovely face, that little dwarf. He suggested to Vergilius unwelcome
thoughts of a new sort of Cupid--deformed, evil, and hideous--typifying
the degenerate passions of Rome. There were in the quiver of this
Cupid arrows which carried the venom of the asp. Some at the table
mocked his grinning face and made a jest of his deformity. When he
could be heard he mimicked the speech and manners of public men.
"A Cupid with a knot in his back," said one.
"And if I were to aim an arrow at you," said the dwarf, quickly, "I'm
sure you'd have a pain in yours."
"My dear," said the gentle-mannered emperor, when the laughter had died
away, "I think we shall now give him the crown of folly and let him go."
"Between the greatest and the least of Romans," said his daughter,
rising and pointing at her father and then at the dwarf, "I am lost in
mediocrity.
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