The prince soon found that this was a sage whom he should understand less as he heard him longer.  He therefore bowed, and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, departed with the air of a man who had co-operated with the present system.

IV.—­Happiness They Find Not

Rasselas returned home full of reflections, and finding that Imlac seemed to discourage a continuance of the search, began to discourse more freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself.

“We will divide the task between us,” said she.  “You shall try what is to be found in the splendour of courts, and I will range the shades of humbler life.”

Accordingly, the prince appeared next day, with a splendid retinue, at the court of the bassa.  But he soon found that the lives of courtiers are a continual succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery.  Many of those who surrounded the bassa were sent only to watch him, and to report his conduct to the sultan.  At last the letters of revocation arrived, the bassa was carried in chains to Constantinople, and in a short time the sultan that had deposed him was murdered by the Janissaries.

The princess, who, in the meantime, had insinuated herself into many private families, proved equally unsuccessful in her inquiries.  She found not one house that was not haunted by some fury that destroyed its quiet.

“In families where there is or is not poverty,” said she, “there is commonly discord.  The love of parents and children seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the children become rivals to their parents.  Each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents betray each other to their children.  The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of expectation and experience.  Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth; and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.”

“Surely,” said the prince, “you must have been unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance.  I am unwilling to believe that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity.”

“Domestic discord,” answered she, “is not inevitably necessary; but it is not easily avoided.  We seldom see that a whole family is virtuous.  The good and the evil cannot well agree; the evil can yet less agree with one another, and even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance when their virtues are of different kinds.  As for those who live single, I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy.  They dream away their time without friendship and without fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements and vicious delights.  They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with censure.”