“He chanced at that time, for indeed long time none lasted with him, to have next in use about him a man of the most envious disposition that, I think, ever infected the air with his breath; {168} whose eyes could not look right upon any happy man, nor ears bear the burden of anybody’s praise; contrary to the natures of all other plagues, plagued with others’ well being; making happiness the ground of his unhappiness, and good news the argument of his sorrow: in sum, a man whose favour no man could win, but by being miserable. And so because those two faithful servants of theirs came in miserable sort to that court, he was apt enough at first to favour them; and the king understanding of their adventure, wherein they had showed so constant a faith unto their lords, suddenly falls to take a pride in making much of them, extolling them with infinite praises, and praising himself in his heart, in that he praised them. And by and by where they made great courtiers, and in the way of minions, when advancement, the most mortal offence to envy, stirred up their former friend to overthrow his own work in them; taking occasion upon the knowledge, newly come to the court, of the late death of the king of Phrygia destroyed by their two lords, who having been a near kinsman to this prince of Pontus, by this envious counsellor, partly with suspicion of practice, partly with glory of, in part, revenging his cousin’s death, the king was suddenly turned, and every turn with him was a down-fall, to lock them up in prison, as servants to his enemies, whom before he had never known, nor, till that time one of his own subjects had entertained and dealt for them, did ever take heed of. But now earnest in every present humour, and making himself brave in his liking, he was content to give them just cause of offence, when they had power to make just revenge. Yet did the princes send unto him before they entered into war, desiring their servants’ liberty. But he, swelling in their humbleness like a bubble blown up with a small breath broken with a great, forgetting, or never knowing humanity, caused their heads to be stricken off, by the advice of his envious counsellor, who now hated them so much the more, as he foresaw their happiness in having such, and so fortunate masters, and sent them with unroyal reproaches to Musidorus and Pyrocles, as if they had done traitorously, and not heroically in killing his tyrannical cousin.