with noble qualities, among others with singular physical beauty. But among his humours was this one, — quite the opposite of that of most princes, who, for the transaction of the most important affairs, make a throne of their close-stool, — that he never had a servant so familiar that he would allow him to see him in his closet: he would go apart to make water, being as modest as a maid in not exhibiting, to a physician or anybody else, the parts which we are wont to keep hidden. (b) I myself, who am so brazen of speech, am none the less naturally inclined to this same modesty: except under great pressure of necessity or of passion, I rarely put before another’s eyes the organs and the acts which our manners ordain shall be kept out of sight; I constrain myself more about this than I think very fitting for a man, and especially for a man of the opinions I profess. (b) But he[1] reached such a pitch of superstition that he expressly ordered in his testament that they should put drawers on him when he was dead. He should have added a codicil to the effect that he who should put them on should be blindfolded.[2]
(c) Cyrus’s behest to his children, that neither they nor any other person should see or touch his body after his soul had departed,[3] I attribute to some religious emotion of his; for both his biographer and himself, among their great qualities, gave indications throughout the whole course of their lives of a peculiar regard and veneration for religion. (b) I was not pleased with the tale told me by a great prince, of a kinsman of mine, a man well known both in peace and in war: it was to the effect that, when dying, very old, at court, and suffering extreme pain from stone, he employed all his last hours in arranging, with eager care, the honours and the ceremony of his burial, and urged all the nobles who visited him to promise to be present at his funeral. He made an urgent entreaty to this same prince, my informant, who saw him during these last hours, that he would order his household to attend, alleging many precedents and arguments to prove that it was a thing due to such a man as he
