He considered his soft, white hands, and pondered the matter as if it were an ordinary question of daily business. His fleshy face with a bright colour about the cheek-bones, the small, pointed nose, the watchful eyes, revealed nothing; but the mere quietness with which he considered the question was, in a sense, a revelation. Lifting his eyes again he spoke quietly. "I see here," he said, turning the pages of the _De Monarchia_, "that Dante attributes the great power of the Roman Empire to the direct action of the divine providence. The Empire to him is a thing divinely ordained, and Augustus is the divine monarch." "One must either attribute all things or nothing to providence," said Machiavelli. "It was the opinion of Plutarch that the Romans confessed their obligations to Fortune by consecrating a great number of temples and statues to that goddess. It was to the courage of her soldiers that Rome owed the Empire, and it was to the wisdom and conduct of her administrators and law-givers that she owed its preservation. If fortune or God rule the world, then man hath no remedy against the evils of his time, and his prudence avails him nothing. I am in part inclined to this opinion, since every day we see things happen contrary to all human expectation; yet, at the same time, man is in some measure free. What I say, then, is this: that fortune is mistress of little more than half of our actions, and man himself is master of all the rest. In all things we may observe the action of certain laws, to which man is subject, but within the limits of which he hath a certain freedom. So, as a sailor, knowing the changes of the tide and wind; how it bloweth from the shore at evening, and from the sea at dawn; and knowing also the mysterious currents in the sea, and the hidden shallows, and the free channels, and the stars by which he is to steer, may bring his venture into port, where one ignorant of these things would suffer shipwreck, the wise man judging of times and opportunities will use caution or courage, as best may serve the occasion. He will prosper most whose mode of acting is adapted to the change of times; but no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to all changes, both because he is naturally inclined to follow one course, and because having prospered in it hitherto he cannot be persuaded to change. Moreover, fortune is a blind and irresistible force, while the divine providence of Dante is mild and beneficent; and though we have instances of fortune we have none of providence; and to assert that fortune directed the growth of the Roman Empire is to say a childish thing, for fortune creates nothing, it rather destroys; but it is man, adapting himself to fortune, who is the creator. Though we may say that fortune doth in a large measure control the works of man, we cannot say that the divine providence hath inspired or maintained in power, by its singular favour, any people. But every