Yet Hazael went home, and on the very morrow commenced his justification of the seer’s previsionary tears, by spreading a thick wet cloth on the face of his master, so that Benhadad, who else would have recovered, died, and Hazael reigned in his stead. Well might the man of God weep, nor could anything be more natural, or at least naturally assumed, than the shuddering repudiation, the deprecating protest, of the envoy that now was, the king—and dog—that to-morrow should be. “Lui-même, à son portrait forcé de rendre hommage, Il frémira d’horreur devant sa propre image.” The man who is weak, observes Miss Lee in the “Canterbury Tales,” is always in danger of becoming a villain; and she exemplifies this liability in the instance of Villars, who, by indulging a passion calculated to enfeeble his understanding and corrupt his heart, is soon to be found touching that point which his high tone of romantic refinement had once induced him to believe it impossible he should even approach. But he protests too much who strenuously protests, with protestation heaped on protestation, against any such possible lapse and collapse on his part; and there are cases of this kind, of which one may say with Molière— “Que c’est être à demi ce que l’on vient de dire, Que de vouloir jurer qu’on ne le sera pas.” Martial is in the right in answering the inquiry of Priscus, how would he live if he became rich and great all at once, with another query, Who can say beforehand what his future conduct will be? _Quemquam posse putas mores narrare futuros?_ If Priscus were to become a lion, what sort of one would he turn out to be? Perhaps like Hazael, a dog. In sight of a corpse suspended to a tree, the “miserable remnant of a wretch that was hanged there for murder,” Robert, in one of Tobin’s dramas, protests to his mother that, robber though he be, _he_ is no murderer; she replies:— “You are a robber; And he who robs, by sharp resistance pressed, Will end the deed in blood: ’twas so with him; He once possessed a soul quick as your own To mercy, and would quake, as you do now, At the bare apprehension of the act That has consigned him to yon blasted tree.”