XXIV. This depraved craving, this flame, which raises itself upon the ashes of another fire, worst or last disease of concupiscence, or of the concupiscence of the superior part of the soul, oppresses those much, who, when they attain the pinnacle of power, arrive at the summit of perverseness; whose whole pursuit, has been seeking provocations for the appetite, dainties to feed their sensuality, and extravagant incentives to inflame desire. In looking for the exquisite, they found the monstrous. Heliogabalus went so far, as to make a banquet, all composed of the combs of cocks. Nero exercised his lust, cloathed in the skins of wild beasts, which was a habit, well suited to the character of that brute. So extravagant were the abominations of other Emperors, that neither the course of so many ages, nor the fragrance of such number of saints as have lived since, have dissipated at Rome, the stink of the Princes of those times. But with all their solicitude, what did they obtain? Nothing; they only augmented the violence of a bad habit, and caused it to exert itself in loathing. Pleasure in the mean while fled away, like the water of Tantalus, which, notwithstanding he seemed to have it always within his reach, his excessive anticipation of laying hold of it, was the occasion of his not being able to obtain it. These people, with all their toil, only acquired anxieties of mind, sickness, and bodily pain. And it is worthy of remarking, that those who gave themselves up to gluttony and lust, became melancholy, peevish, and disagreeable; and it may be from this cause, that we have rarely heard of a Prince, who was lascivious and a glutton, in whom cruelty was not joined to those vices. Some of them came to be tired of themselves, for instance, the second Apicius, who, after gorging two millions and a half, deprived himself of life with a halter. What was this, but finding vanity and vexation of spirit, among the greatest: endowments of fortune? Do even the miserably poor, think you, lead so unsavoury and tiresome lives? SECT. VIII. XXV. Truly, I have now pursued the comparison of the one and the other fortune, through the most difficult part, having drawn into the parallel, the most elevated, and the most abased, the sovereign state, and that of beggary. I did not intend so much when I began to write this chapter, but the pen took a flight without my being aware of it, towards the extreme of both the extremities. So much was not necessary, but as it is done, let us suppose that we have conquered all the difficulty at the first onset; because, if he who is under the feet of fortune, is equal to him who treads the summit of her wheel; the reason is stronger, for supposing him who has no more than what is required to provide things that are precisely necessary, equal to the man, who is possessed of a princely fortune.