Manhattan Monologues Read Online Free PDF

that! A great man would have taken one position or another. He would have joined in the applause and the decisions, or he would have stopped the games altogether. Napoleon would have. Lincoln would have."
    "President Lincoln was something of a compromiser, Miss Seward. And always a realist."
    "Do you think he would have put up with this? Never! And anyway I can't see a man, a real man, sitting in his box reading Plato or Zeno while dwarfs armed with spears and nets battled barbarian women with sabers." Perhaps I had been reading too much Lew Wallace or Bulwer-Lytton. And then it occurred to me that I could imagine Papa taking an interest in such conflicts; in Madrid, he had adored the bullfights. And I could even see Grandpa putting a stop to the whole business. But to do nothing! "Only a woman would act like Marcus Aurelius!" I went on to protest, not caring whether Wintie took this personally.
    But he only chuckled. "My dear Miss Seward, may I point out that it is the Vestals who are condemning the poor man who has lost his round?"
    "Maybe that's what happens to us poor women when the men won't take any position!"
    But there was another picture in the gallery, also depicting a scene in the Colosseum, that was my particular favorite. The legend on its frame was
The Last Token,
and it showed a young woman, barefoot and clad in a plain white gown, standing alone on the sandy floor of the arena, with nothing between her and the two snarling felines emerging from the lifted grilled gate. But she pays no heed to the hungry beasts; her eyes are searching the front row boxes for the noble lover who has just tossed her a farewell rose. It was not long after this colloquy with Wintie that I found myself again alone in Grandpa's gallery with a young man who was skillfully attempting to replace Wintie in my still rather smothered affections. He was Miles Constable, the possessor of a florid manner and many smiles who tended to make fun of everything and almost everybody. I thought he overdid this, but he intrigued me.
    He knew of my preference among the paintings and was re-examining
The Last Token
with a critical eye.
    "Do you really admire this daub, Aggie?" He had dropped the address "Miss Seward" as early as our second meeting. "What a cad the poor girl's lover must have been! I presume he was a noble and she a Christian, and that it was his loose tongue that betrayed her secret to the police. Unless he was tired of their liaison and tipped them off about her Sunday visits to the catacombs to hear Mass."
    "That's so like you, Miles! Always to attribute the lowest motive to anyone! Her lover hadn't been condemned, because he wasn't a Christian. What could he do against the might of Rome but stay as near to her as he could until the end and show her that he would never forget her? It would take more courage than I have to see my loved one torn to pieces. That rose he tossed to her was like the crucifix that a holy monk braved the flames to hold up to the eyes of the dying Joan of Arc!"
    "Only your Marcus Pomposus, or whatever his name was, wasn't risking his well-pressed toga in any fire. He was probably too busy passing sweetmeats to his new girlfriend in the imperial box."
    "What could you expect him to do? Jump into the arena and feed himself to those leopards?"
    "They're not leopards; they're jaguars. I noted that the first time you introduced me to this chamber of horrors. You may ask what jaguars were doing in the Colosseum centuries before the discovery of South America. Well, I made a point of reading up on the Viennese painter who executed your masterpiece and discovered that he used animals in the local zoo for his models, obviously without checking on their usual habitat."
    "Very clever of you." It was like Miles to know everything. "But I wonder whether you're not like that Roman lord yourself. I can see you, sitting calmly in that box—oh, possibly with a stray tear quickly brushed away—and flicking with your