Devereux Book V by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

IT was singular enough that my introduction to the notice of Peter the Great and Philip le Debonnaire should have taken place under circumstances so far similar that both those illustrious personages were playing the part rather of subjects than of princes. I cannot, however, conceive a greater mark of the contrast between their characters than the different motives and manners of the incognitos severally assumed.

Philip, in a scene of low riot and debauch, hiding the Jupiter under the Silenus, -- wearing the mask only for the licentiousness it veiled, and foregoing the prerogative of power, solely for indulgence in the grossest immunities of vice.