but the exigencies of party forbid him to meet them. If their
intercourse continued, it would awaken suspicion; people would imagine
that some dishonorable bargain was going on; his friends would be held to
be traitors desirous to sell themselves, and he the corrupt minister
prepared to buy them. He has, therefore, been obliged to break off
friendships of twenty years' standing, and to sacrifice attachments which
had become a second nature.

Sometimes, however, the minister still gives way to his old feelings; he
receives or visits his friends privately; he shuts himself up with them,
and talks of the times when they could be open friends. By dint of
precautions they have hitherto succeeded in concealing this blot of
friendship against policy; but sooner or later the newspapers will be
informed of it, and will denounce him to the country as an object of
distrust.

For whether hatred be honest or dishonest, it never shrinks from any
accusation. Sometimes it even proceeds to crime. The usher assured me
that several warnings had been given the minister which had made him fear
the vengeance of an assassin, and that he no longer ventured out on foot.

Then, from one thing to another, I learned what temptations came in to
mislead or overcome his judgment; how he found himself fatally led into
obliquities which he could not but deplore. Misled by passion, over-
persuaded by entreaties, or compelled for reputation's sake, he has many
times held the balance with an unsteady hand. How sad the condition of
him who is in authority! Not only are the miseries of power imposed upon
him, but its vices also, which, not content with torturing, succeed in
corrupting him.