--Juvenal, iii. 195.]

This story is in every child's mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being
reproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing
them, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those little
birds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father.
This parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the
revenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself,
who was to suffer for it. Hesiod corrects the saying of Plato, that
punishment closely follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the same
time with it. Whoever expects punishment already suffers it, and whoever
has deserved it expects it. Wickedness contrives torments against
itself:

"Malum consilium consultori pessimum."

["Ill designs are worst to the contriver."
--Apud Aul. Gellium, iv. 5.]

as the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for it
there loses its sting and its use for ever,

"Vitasque in vulnere ponunt."

["And leave their own lives in the wound."
--Virgil, Geo., iv. 238.]

Cantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, a
counterpoison against their poison. In like manner, at the same time
that men take delight in vice, there springs in the conscience a