“And so upon security of both sides, they were interchanged: where I
may not omit the work of friendship in Pyrocles, who both in speech
and countenance to Musidorus, well showed that he thought himself
injured and not relieved by him; asking him what he had ever seen in
him, why he could not bear the extremities of mortal accidents as well
as any man? and why he should envy him the glory of suffering death
for his friend’s cause, and, as it were, rob him of his own
possession? but in that notable contention (where the conquest must be
the conqueror’s destruction, and safety the punishment of the
conquered) Musidorus prevailed because he was a more welcome prey to
the unjust king; and a cheerfully going towards, as Pyrocles went
frowardly fromward his death, he was delivered to the king, who could
not be enough sure of him, without he fed his own eyes upon one whom
he had begun to fear, as soon as the other began to be.
“Yet because he would in one act both make ostentation of his own
felicity, into whose hands his most feared enemy was fallen, and
withal cut off such hopes from his suspected subjects, when they
should know certainly he was dead, with much more skilful cruelty, and
horrible solemnity he caused each thing to be prepared for his triumph
of tyranny. And so the day being come, he was led forth by many armed
men who often had been the fortifiers of wickedness, to the place of
execution, where coming with a mind comforted in that he had done such
service to Pyrocles, this strange encounter he had.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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