The letters are the stars, whose orbits are as unchanging and everlasting as are the first causes of all that exists or happens." "And are you quite sure that you never read wrongly in this great record ?" asked Antinous.
"Even I may err," replied Hadrian.

"But this time I have not deceived myself.

A heavy misfortune threatens me.

It is a strange, terrible and extraordinary coincidence!" "What ?" "From that accursed Antioch--whence nothing good has ever come to me--I have received the saying of an oracle which foretells that, that--why should I hide it from you--in the middle of the year now about to begin some dreadful misfortune shall fall upon me, as lightning strikes the traveller to the earth; and tonight--look here.

Here is the house of Death, here are the planets--but what do you know of such things?
Last night--the night in which once before such terrors were wrought, the stars confirmed the fatal oracle with as much naked plainness, as much unmistakable certainty as if they had tongues to shout the evil forecast in my ear.