If I am annoyed with Marguerite Yourcenar upon reading her Memoirs of Hadrian for the second time, it is only because I am so passionate about her as a fellow human being. Yes, I love her as a friend. And I respect her as a witness of this world. Her skill as a writer is of much less interest to me, but it is here that I find fault with the entire construction of her most famous book. Her Hadrian tells his story too late in his life to be credible as its author. His memoirs would have had a rather different taste and smell had he embarked upon his letter to Marcus Aurelius—his designated successor’s designated successor—on his deathbed. He would not have been able to reach convincingly as far back as his carefree youth and his slow rise to prominence, let alone to capture the warm flesh of his life’s love, the fulcrum of the whole story. Wishing to round off the emperor’s missive as neatly as possible, pushing for the whole stretch minus its gruesome and unaccountable end, Yourcenar chose a moment too late in Hadrian’s life. Memoirs are written earlier, when life’s murky canvas is still within reach and brushes are not yet crusty. They are written while a glimmer of hope, however misguided or even ridiculous, cannot be pushed out of sight. All I can say in Yourcenar’s defense is that she finished the book, which she had pondered for so many years since her youth, a bit too early in her own life. When her memoirs of the emperor were published, she was not even fifty, a decade younger than her beloved subject. And her disgruntled friend.