“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer⁠—you are like a slave-driver⁠—you are like the Roman emperors!”

I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome , and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.

“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first⁠—”