Seldius should depart, the Emperor calling for some of his servants, and nobody answering him (for those that attended upon him, were some gone to their lodgings, and all the rest asleep), the Emperor took up the candle himself, and went before Seldius to light him down the stairs; and so did, notwithstanding all the resistance that Seldius could make.  And when he was come to the stair’s foot, he said thus unto him:  “Seldius, remember this of Charles the Emperor, when he shall be dead and gone, that him, whom thou hast known in thy time environed with so many mighty armies and guards of soldiers, thou hast also seen alone, abandoned, and forsaken, yea even of his own domestical servants, &c.  I acknowledge this change of Fortune to proceed from the mighty hand of God, which I will by no means go about to withstand.”

But you will say, that there are some things else, and of greater regard than the former.  The first is the reverend respect that is held of great men, and the honor done unto them by all sorts of people.  And it is true indeed:  provided, that an inward love for their justice and piety accompany the outward worship given to their places and power; without which what is the applause of the multitude, but as the outcry of an herd of animals, who without the knowledge of any true cause, please themselves with the noise they make?  For seeing it is a thing exceeding rare, to distinguish Virtue and Fortune:  the most impious (if prosperous) have ever been applauded; the most virtuous (if unprosperous) have ever been despised.  For as Fortune’s man rides the horse, so Fortune herself rides the man; who when he is descended and on foot, the man taken from his beast, and Fortune from the man, a base groom beats the one, and a bitter contempt spurns at the other, with equal liberty.

The second is the greatening of our posterity, and the contemplation of their glory whom we leave behind us.  Certainly, of those which conceive that their souls departed take any comfort therein, it may be truly said of them, which Lactantius spake of certain heathen philosophers, “quod sapientes sunt in re stulta."[13] For when our spirits immortal shall be once separate from our mortal bodies, and disposed by God; there remaineth in them no other joy of their posterity which succeed, than there doth of pride in that stone, which sleepeth in the wall of the king’s palace; nor any other sorrow for their poverty, than there doth of shame in that, which beareth up a beggar’s cottage.  “Nesciunt mortui, etiam sancti, quid agunt vivi, etiam eorum filii, quia animae mortuorum rebus viventium non intersunt”:  “The dead, though holy, know nothing of the living, no, not of their own children:  for the souls of those departed, are not conversant with their affairs that remain."[14] And if we doubt of St. Augustine, we can not of Job; who tells us, “That we know not if our sons shall be honorable:  neither shall we understand concerning them, whether they shall