afford, is put into a pretty close hand. Had I been born a great person,
I should have been ambitious to have made myself beloved, not to make
myself feared or admired: shall I more plainly express it? I should more
have endeavoured to please than to profit others. Cyrus very wisely, and
by the mouth of a great captain, and still greater philosopher, prefers
his bounty and benefits much before his valour and warlike conquests;
and the elder Scipio, wherever he would raise himself in esteem, sets a
higher value upon his affability and humanity, than on his prowess and
victories, and has always this glorious saying in his mouth: "That he has
given his enemies as much occasion to love him as his friends." I will
then say, that if a man must, of necessity, owe something, it ought to be
by a more legitimate title than that whereof I am speaking, to which the
necessity of this miserable war compels me; and not in so great a debt as
that of my total preservation both of life and fortune: it overwhelms me.

I have a thousand times gone to bed in my own house with an apprehension
that I should be betrayed and murdered that very night; compounding with
fortune, that it might be without terror and with quick despatch; and,
after my Paternoster, I have cried out,

"Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit!"

["Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?"
--Virgil, Ecl., i. 71.]

What remedy? 'tis the place of my birth, and that of most of my
ancestors; they have here fixed their affection and name. We inure
ourselves to whatever we are accustomed to; and in so miserable a
condition as ours is, custom is a great bounty of nature, which benumbs
out senses to the sufferance of many evils. A civil war has this with it