recently saw to be the case with one of our princes,[1] who, having heard at Trent, where he was, of the death of his eldest brother, — a brother upon whom, indeed, rested the support and honour of his family, — and very soon afterward of the death of a younger brother, its next hope; and having sustained these two assaults with exemplary firmness, when, some days later, one of his servants died, he allowed himself to be overcome by this last event, and, losing all his self-control, abandoned himself to mourning and regret, in such a way that it was argued by some that he had been touched to the quick only by the last blow; but the truth was that, being already full and over-full of sorrow, the slightest addition broke down the barriers of his endurance. The like might be thought, let me say, of our other tale, were it not that it adds that, when Cambyses asked Psammenitus why it was that, not being moved by the unhappy fate of his son and his daughter, he bore with so little patience that of his friend, “Because,” he replied, “only that last grief could be shewn by tears; the first two far surpassed all means of expression.” Perhaps, in this connection, we might recall the conceit of that ancient painter,[2] who, having to represent the mourning of those present at the sacrifice of Iphigenia according to the degree of each person’s interest in the death of that innocent fair maid, having exhausted the last resources of his art, when it came to the maiden’s father, he painted him with his face covered, as if no visage could evince that degree of grief. This is why poets describe that wretched mother Niobe, when she had lost, first, seven sons, and straightway as many daughters, over-burdened with her losses, as having at last been transformed to stone, —
- ↑ Un prince des nostres. Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine. This expression is to be distinguished from un de nos princes, which is used for members of French families, the houses of France and of Bourbon; the former is used for the house of Lorraine, which was foreign by origin. The cardinal was at the Council of Trent in 1563, at the time of the assassination of his brother François de Guise, and of the death also, after the battle of Dreux, of a younger brother, the Grand Prior.
- ↑ Timanthes, 4th century b.c. See Cicero, Orator, XXII; Pliny, Natural History, XXXV, 10; Valerius Maximus, VIII, 2, ext. 6; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, II, 13.
