Oxenstiern.—­Madam, the world will scarce respect the frailties of queens when they are on their thrones, much less when they have voluntarily degraded themselves to the level of the vulgar.  And if scandalous tongues have unjustly aspersed their fame, the way to clear it is not by an assassination.

Christina.—­Oh! that I were alive again, and restored to my throne, that I might punish the insolence of this hoary traitor!  But, see! he leaves me, he turns his back upon me with cool contempt!  Alas! do I not deserve this scorn?  In spite of myself I must confess that I do.  O vanity, how short-lived are the pleasures thou bestowest!  I was thy votary.  Thou wast the god for whom I changed my religion.  For thee I forsook my country and my throne.  What compensation have I gained for all these sacrifices so lavishly, so imprudently made?  Some puffs of incense from authors who thought their flattery due to the rank I had held, or hoped to advance themselves by my recommendation, or, at best, over-rated my passion for literature, and praised me to raise the value of those talents with which they were endowed.  But in the esteem of wise men I stand very low, and their esteem alone is the true measure of glory.  Nothing, I perceive, can give the mind a lasting joy but the consciousness of having performed our duty in that station which it has pleased the Divine Providence to assign to us.  The glory of virtue is solid and eternal.  All other will fade away like a thin vapoury cloud, on which the casual glance of some faint beams of light has superficially imprinted their weak and transient colours.

DIALOGUE XI.

TITUS VESPASIANUS—­PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS.

Titus.—­No, Scipio, I can’t give place to you in this.  In other respects I acknowledge myself your inferior, though I was Emperor of Rome and you only her consul.  I think your triumph over Carthage more glorious than mine over Judaea.  But in that I gained over love I must esteem myself superior to you, though your generosity with regard to the fair Celtiberian, your captive, has been celebrated so highly.

Scipio.—­Fame has been, then, unjust to your merit, for little is said of the continence of Titus, but mine has been the favourite topic of eloquence in every age and country.

Titus.—­It has; and in particular your great historian Livy has poured forth all the ornaments of his admirable rhetoric to embellish and dignify that part of your story.  I had a great historian too—­Cornelius Tacitus; but either from the brevity which he affected in writing, or from the severity of his nature, which never having felt the passion of love, thought the subduing of it too easy a victory to deserve great encomiums, he has bestowed but three lines upon my parting with Berenice, which cost me more pain and greater efforts of mind than the conquest of Jerusalem.