believed that as his acts and intentions were to be judged by results,
he might, if he lived and if fortune befriended him, have made it clear
to all, that what he did was done to preserve his country, and not
from personal ambition; and he might have so contrived matters that no
successor of his could ever turn to bad ends the means which he had used
for good ends. But he was misled by a preconceived opinion, and failed
to understand that ill-will is not to be vanquished by time nor
propitiated by favours. And, so, from not knowing how to resemble
Brutus, he lost power, and fame, and was driven an exile from his
country.

That it is as hard a matter to preserve a princedom as it is to preserve
a commonwealth, will be shown in the Chapter following.



CHAPTER IV.--_That an Usurper is never safe in his Princedom while those
live whom he has deprived of it._

From what befell the elder Tarquin at the hands of the sons of Ancus,
and Servius Tullius at the hands of Tarquin the Proud, we see what an
arduous and perilous course it is to strip a king of his kingdom and yet
suffer him to live on, hoping to conciliate him by benefits. We see,
too, how the elder Tarquin was ruined by his belief that he held the
kingdom by a just title, since it had been given him by the people and
confirmed to him by the senate, never suspecting that the sons of Ancus
would be so stirred by resentment that it would be impossible to content
them with what contented all the rest of Rome. Servius Tullius again,
was ruined through believing that he could conciliate the sons of Ancus
by loading them with favours.