racies
are attended by danger at three stages: before during, and after their
execution; for which reason very few of them have had a happy issue;
it being next to impossible to surmount all these different dangers
successfully. And to begin with those which are incurred beforehand,
and which are graver than all the rest, I say that he must be both very
prudent and very fortunate who, when contriving a conspiracy, does not
suffer his secret to be discovered.

Conspiracies are discovered either by disclosures made, or by
conjecture. Disclosures are made through the treachery or folly of those
to whom you communicate your design. Treachery is to be looked for,
because you can impart your plans only to such persons as you believe
ready to face death on your behalf, or to those who are discontented
with the prince. Of men whom you can trust thus implicitly, one or two
may be found; but when you have to open your designs to many, they
cannot all be of this nature; and their goodwill towards you must be
extreme if they are not daunted by the danger and by fear of punishment.
Moreover men commonly deceive themselves in respect of the love which
they imagine others bear them, nor can ever be sure of it until they
have put it to the proof. But to make proof of it in a matter like this
is very perilous; and even if you have proved it already, and found it
true in some other dangerous trial, you cannot assume that there will be
the same fidelity here, since this far transcends every other kind of
danger. Again, if you gauge a man's fidelity by his discontent with the
prince, you may easily deceive yourself; for so soon as you have taken
this discontented man into your confidence, you have supplied him with
the means whereby he may become contented; so that either his hatred
of the prince must be great indeed, or your influence over him
extraordinary, if it keep him faithful. Hence it comes that so many
conspiracies have been discovered and crushed in their earliest stage,
and that when the secret is preserved among many accomplices for any
length of time, it is looked on as a miracle; as in the case of the
conspiracy of Piso against Nero, and, in our own days, in that of the
Pazzi against Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici; which last, though more
than fifty persons were privy to it, was not discovered until it came to
be carried out.

Conspiracies are disclosed through the imprudence of a conspirator when
he talks so indiscreetly