Scipio.—­Give me thy hand, noble Titus.  Thou wast worthy of the empire, and Scipio Africanus honours thy virtue.

Titus.—­My virtue can have no greater reward from the approbation of man.  But, O Scipio, think what anguish my heart must have felt when I took that resolution, and when I communicated it to my dear, my unhappy Berenice.  You saw the struggle of Masinissa, when you forced him to give up his beloved Sophonisba.  Mine was a harder conflict.  She had abandoned him to marry the King of Numidia.  He knew that her ruling passion was ambition, not love.  He could not rationally esteem her when she quitted a husband whom she had ruined, who had lost his crown and his liberty in the cause of her country and for her sake, to give her person to him, the capital foe of that unfortunate husband.  He must, in spite of his passion, have thought her a perfidious, a detestable woman.  But I esteemed Berenice; she deserved my esteem.  I was certain she would not have accepted the empire from any other hand; and had I been a private man she would have raised me to her throne.  Yet I had the fortitude—­I ought, perhaps, to say the hardness of heart—­to bid her depart from my sight; depart for ever!  What, O Publius, was your conquest over yourself, in giving back to her betrothed lover the Celtiberian captive compared to this?  Indeed, that was no conquest.  I will not so dishonour the virtue of Scipio as to think he could feel any struggle with himself on that account.  A woman engaged to another—­engaged by affection as well as vows, let her have been ever so beautiful—­could raise in your heart no sentiments but compassion and friendship.  To have violated her would have been an act of brutality, which none but another Tarquin could have committed.  To have detained her from her husband would have been cruel.  But where love is mutual, where the object beloved suffers more in the separation than you do yourself, to part with her is indeed a struggle.  It is the hardest sacrifice a good heart can make to its duty.

Scipio.—­I acknowledge that it is, and yield you the palm.  But I will own to you, Titus, I never knew much of the tenderness you describe.  Hannibal, Carthage, Rome, the saving of my country, the subduing of its rival, these filled my thoughts, and left no room there for those effeminate passions.  I do not blame your sensibility; but when I went to the capitol to talk with Jove, I never consulted him about love affairs.

Titus.—­If my soul had been possessed by ambition alone, I might possibly have been a greater man than I was; but I should not have been more virtuous, nor have gained the title I preferred to that of conqueror of Judaea and Emperor of Rome, in being called the delight of humankind.

DIALOGUE XII

HENRY DUKE OF GUISE—­MACHIAVEL.

Guise.—­Avaunt! thou fiend.  I abhor thy sight.  I look upon thee as the original cause of my death, and of all the calamities brought upon the French nation, in my father’s time and my own.