at they quitted the world in the same way as other
men. They thought they must be taken up into heaven to be the lords of
demigods.

When the prince is good, the subjects are good, for they always imitate
their masters; or at least, if the subjects cannot attain to this height
of virtue, they at least are not as bad as they would be otherwise; and,
at all events, public decency is observed. Oh, blessed kingdoms that are
governed by such hearts! and oh, most miserable ones that are at the
mercy of a man without justice--a fellow-creature without feelings!

Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of
posterity. Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and
Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might.
I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the
dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse
under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of
the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains
by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were
sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.

But they are not without torments of their own. At the core of their own
hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies. There he stands
every day and every moment--one who was born of the same mother with
Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his
infant brethren before they saw the light. His name is Suspicion.[2]

Yes, Suspicion;--the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest
that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being.
This is their tormentor by excellence. He does not trouble the poor and
lowly. He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune
has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures. Well may the man hug
himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him. Tyrants
are in perpetual fear. They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge
taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret. The fear
which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch
afraid of every soul among them.

Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of
it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon
the hearts of his race. He was one of the first who took to the custom
of wearing beards, for, gr