" they will say, "make the kindness you have done me into a wrong:
for it is a wrong, if you do not demand some return from me, and so make
me ungrateful. What if I do not know what sort of repayment you wish
for? if I am so occupied by business, and my attention is so much
diverted to other subjects that I have not been able to watch for an
opportunity of serving you? Point out to me what I can do for you, what
you wish me to do. Why do you despair, before making a trial of me? Why
are you in such haste to lose both your benefit and your friend? How can
you tell whether I do not wish, or whether I do not know how to repay
you: whether it be in intention or in opportunity that I am wanting?
Make a trial of me." I would therefore remind him of what I had done,
without bitterness, not in public, or in a reproachful manner, but so
that he may think that he himself has remembered it rather than that it
has been recalled to him.

XXIV. One of Julius Caesar's veterans was once pleading before him
against his neighbours, and the cause was going against him. "Do you
remember, general," said he, "that in Spain you dislocated your ankle
near the river Sucro [Footnote: Xucar]?" When Caesar said that he
remembered it, he continued, "Do you remember that when, during the
excessive heat, you wished to rest under a tree which afforded very
little shade, as the ground in which that solitary tree grew was rough
and rocky, one of your comrades spread his cloak under you?" Caesar
answered, "Of course, I remember; indeed, I was perishing with thirst;
and since was unable to walk to the nearest spring, I would have crawled
thither on my hands and knees, had not my comrade, a brave and active
man, brought me water in his helmet." "Could you, then, my general,
recognize that man or that helmet?" Caesar replied that he could not
remember the helmet, but that he could remember the man well; and he
added, I fancy in anger at being led away to this old story in the midst
of a judicial enquiry, "At any rate, you are not he." "I do not blame
you, Caesar," answered the man, "for not recognizing me; for when this
took place, I was unwounded; but afterwards, at the battle of Munda,
my eye was struck out, and the bones of my skull crushed. Nor would
you recognize that helmet if you saw it, for it was split by a Spanish
sword." Caesar would not permit this man to be troubled with lawsuits,
and presented his old soldier with the fields through which a vil