And these other two:  Croesus, having caused a gentleman, the favourite of his brother Pantaleon, to be seized, carried him into a fuller’s shop, where he caused him to be scratched and carded with the cards and combs belonging to that trade, till he died.  George Sechel, chief commander of the peasants of Poland, who committed so many mischiefs under the title of the Crusade, being defeated in battle and taken bu the Vayvode of Transylvania, was three days bound naked upon the rack exposed to all sorts of torments that any one could contrive against him:  during which time many other prisoners were kept fasting; in the end, he living and looking on, they made his beloved brother Lucat, for whom alone he entreated, taking on himself the blame of all their evil actions drink his blood, and caused twenty of his most favoured captains to feed upon him, tearing his flesh in pieces with their teeth, and swallowing the morsels.  The remainder of his body and his bowels, so soon as he was dead, were boiled, and others of his followers compelled to eat them.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON

Such as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato, who killed himself, compare two beautiful natures, much resembling one another.  The first acquired his reputation several ways, and excels in military exploits and the utility of his public employments; but the virtue of the younger, besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to it in vigour, was much more pure and unblemished.  For who could absolve that of the Censor from envy and ambition, having dared to attack the honour of Scipio, a man in goodness and all other excellent qualities infinitely beyond him or any other of his time?

That which they, report of him, amongst other things, that in his extreme old age he put himself upon learning the Greek tongue with so greedy an appetite, as if to quench a long thirst, does not seem to me to make much for his honour; it being properly what we call falling into second childhood.  All things have their seasons, even good ones, and I may say my Paternoster out of time; as they accused T. Quintus Flaminius, that being general of an army, he was seen praying apart in the time of a battle that he won.

          “Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis.”

     ["The wise man limits even honest things.”—­Juvenal, vi. 444]

Eudemonidas, seeing Xenocrates when very old, still very intent upon his school lectures:  “When will this man be wise,” said he, “if he is yet learning?” And Philopaemen, to those who extolled King Ptolemy for every day inuring his person to the exercise of arms:  “It is not,” said he, “commendable in a king of his age to exercise himself in these things; he ought now really to employ them.”  The young are to make their preparations, the old to enjoy them, say the sages:  and the greatest vice they observe in us is that our desires incessantly grow young again; we are always re-beginning to live.