lives of courtiers
are a continual succession of plots and detections, stratagems and
escapes, faction and treachery. Many of those who surrounded the bassa
were sent only to watch him, and to report his conduct to the sultan. At
last the letters of revocation arrived, the bassa was carried in chains
to Constantinople, and in a short time the sultan that had deposed him
was murdered by the Janissaries.

The princess, who, in the meantime, had insinuated herself into many
private families, proved equally unsuccessful in her inquiries. She
found not one house that was not haunted by some fury that destroyed its
quiet.

"In families where there is or is not poverty," said she, "there is
commonly discord. The love of parents and children seldom continues
beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the children become rivals
to their parents. Each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or
fondness of the parents, and the parents betray each other to their
children. The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the
old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and
despondence, of expectation and experience. Age looks with anger on the
temerity of youth; and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age."

"Surely," said the prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your
choice of acquaintance. I am unwilling to believe that the most tender
of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity."

"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably necessary; but it
is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole family is virtuous.
The good and the evil cannot well agree; the evil can yet less agree
with one another, and even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance when
their virtues are of different kinds. As for those who live single, I
never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They dream away
their time without friendship and without fondness, and are driven to
rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish
amusements and vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant
sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour,
and their tongues with censure."

"I cannot forbear to flatter myself," said Rasselas, "that prudence and
benevolence will make marriage happy. What can be expected but
disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of
youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgment, without for