of humble expression and supplication to soften him, determined, in the last extremity, to await him, sword in hand. This action of his cut short his master’s rage, who, seeing him play so honourable a part, received him into favour. The incident may suffer another interpretation by those who have not heard of this prince’s prodigious strength and bravery. The Emperor Conrad the Third, having besieged Guelph, Duke of Bavaria, would vouchsafe no milder conditions — whatever base and dastardly terms of satisfaction were offered him — than to permit the gentlewomen who were besieged with the duke to go forth on foot, their honour secure, with whatever they could carry on their persons. And they, in greatness of heart, bethought them to take upon their backs their husbands and children and the duke himself. The emperor received such keen delight from witnessing the adroitness[1] of their courage, that he wept for joy, and quenched the bitterness of the mortal and capital hatred he had cherished against the duke, and thenceforth treated him and his courteously.[2]
(b) Either of these methods would readily prevail with me, for I have a wonderful propensity toward mercy and mildness; so much so that I believe I should more instinctively yield to compassion than to admiration. Yet pity is a vicious sentiment, according to the Stoics:[3] they would have us succour the afflicted, but not be bowed down in sympathy with them.[4] (a) Now these examples seem to me the more apt, inasmuch as we see in them these souls, when assailed and tested in these two ways, encounter the one without being shaken, and bend under the other. It may be said that to give way to commiseration and pity is the sign of an easy-going, kindly, and weak disposition; whence it happens that the feebler natures, as those of women and children and the common people, are most subject to this; but that, holding tears and prayers in contempt, to yield only to veneration for the sacred impersonation of courage is the sign of a
