Louis Couperus

“ The cab came; and Aunt Stefanie, in a very old fur cloak, hoisted herself in, sprightlily, climbed up the step and felt anything but well. Was it coming at last? Was she about to fall ill and die? Oh, if she could only be sure of going to Heaven! So long as she was not sure of it, she would rather go on living, rather grow as old as Mother and Takma, rather live to be a hundred. The cab was now pulling up in front of the ground-floor rooms in which Anton lived ”

“ Nobody knew of his solitary fantasies, which became more intense as he grew older and more impotent in his sensuality; nobody knew of the lust of his imagination nor how, as he read Suetonius, he pictured how he had once, in a century long past, been Tiberius, how he had held the most furious orgies in gloomy solitude at Capri and committed murder in voluptuousness and sent the victims of his passions dashing into the sea from the rocks and surrounded himself with a bevy of children beautiful as Cupids. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII THERE was a cold wind, with whirling snowflakes, and Aunt Stefanie de Laders had not at first intended to go out: she had a cough and lately had not been feeling at all the thing; she feared that this winter would be her last. Not everybody lived to be so old as Mamma or Mr. Takma ”