Our Italy is full of such, who will have their reward from the pens of posterity.  Greater wretches never appeared in the shapes of Neros and Caligulas, or any other such monsters, let them have been who they might.  I enter not into particulars; for it is always better to speak of the dead than the living; but I must say, that Agrigentum never fared worse under Phalaris, nor Syracuse under Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were sent by dozens to the scaffold or into hopeless exile.

But they are not without torments of their own.  At the core of their own hearts there stands an inflicter of no less agonies.  There he stands every day and every moment—­one who was born of the same mother with Wrath, and Cruelty, and Rapine, and who never ceased tormenting his infant brethren before they saw the light.  His name is Suspicion.[2]

Yes, Suspicion;—­the cruelest visitation, the worst evil spirit and pest that ever haunted with its poisonous whisper the mind of human being.  This is their tormentor by excellence.  He does not trouble the poor and lowly.  He agonises the brain in the proud heads of those whom fortune has put over the heads of their fellow-creatures.  Well may the man hug himself on his freedom who fears nobody because nobody hates him.  Tyrants are in perpetual fear.  They never cease thinking of the mortal revenge taken upon tormentors of their species openly or in secret.  The fear which all men feel of the one single wretch, makes the single wretch afraid of every soul among them.

Hear a story of one of these miserables, which, whatever you may think of it, is true to the letter; such letter, at all events, as is written upon the hearts of his race.  He was one of the first who took to the custom of wearing beards, for, great as he was, he had a fear of the race of barbers!  He built a tower in his palace, guarded by deep ditches and thick walls.  It had but one drawbridge and one bay-window.  There was no other opening; so that the very light of day had scarcely admittance, or the inmates a place to breathe at.  In this tower he slept; and it was his wife’s business to put a ladder down for him when he came in.  A dog kept watch at the drawbridge; and except the dog and the wife, not a soul was to be discerned about the place.  Yet he had such little trust in her, that he always sent spies to look about the room before he withdrew for the night.

Of what use was it all?  The woman herself killed him with his own sword, and his soul went straight to hell.

Rhadamanthus, the judge there, thrust him under the boiling lake, but was astonished to find that he betrayed no symptoms of anguish.  He did not weep and howl as the rest did, or cry out, “I burn, I burn!” He evinced so little suffering, that Rhadamanthus said, “I must put this fellow into other quarters.”  Accordingly, he sent him into the lowest pit, where the torments are beyond all others.