There were secrets, kept hidden from my brother and my mother, which I disclosed to you alone. And who now has the power to give away or withhold the highest offices in the realm? Those offices, remember, have brought you great renown and much aggrandizement. I will not speak of the favours I have conferred, for your sake, on your father and brother and kinsmen; I will not mention all those whom I have promoted from obscurity and indigence to high rank, merely to please you; nor will I speak of the many who have acquired not inconsiderable riches, and now, instead of existing in the penurious manner of their forbears, hold commands in the army and fill responsible posts in the civil administration.
Their injustices, whether committed in secret or in the broad light of day, were purposely ignored by me, for I knew these malefactors were legion and held my peace at their wrong-doing, being prepared to tolerate anything for your sake. My one comfort in the hour of trouble was, I believed, yourself — after God, of course.
How groundless my hopes
I chose you to stand by me throughout the time of my tribulations, and elected you to supervise my affairs constantly, because I thought that in you, alone of all men, I had won an ally and a partner, and because I was confident that the perplexities which assailed us would be settled by your aid. But my plans — how vain they appear now, how groundless my hopes! Through your senseless pride, the treasure that I sought has turned out to be nothing but rubble. Hope will not always spring eternal: a host of evils takes the heart out of a man. But there — we have brought this trouble on ourselves, deluded into thinking that fire can be extinguished with oil.
19. ‘In place of the comfort that I looked for, you bring on me disaster: instead of an ally, I find in you an open enemy, instead of a fellow-worker, a destructive agent. So, at least, it appears, if the rumours that are spread abroad about you are true. Men say that you are arming yourself for the fray, intent on vengeance, as if you had [290] suffered at my hands the vilest of wrong-doing, the supreme disservice.
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