r ye see the criminal stifled in his own
crimes, the slayer of his kin punished for his misdoings. What man of
but ordinary wit, beholding it, would account this kindness a wrong?
What sane man could be sorry that the crime has recoiled upon the
culprit? Who could lament the killing of a most savage executioner? Or
bewail the righteous death of a most cruel despot? Ye behold the doer of
the deed; he is before you. Yea, I own that I have taken vengeance for
my country and my father. Your hands were equally bound to the task
which mine fulfilled. What it would have beseemed you to accomplish with
me, I achieved alone. Nor had I any partner in so glorious a deed, or
the service of any man to help me. Not that I forget that you would have
helped this work, had I asked you; for doubtless you have remained loyal
to your king and loving to your prince. But I chose that the wicked
should be punished without imperilling you; I thought that others need
not set their shoulders to the burden when I deemed mine strong enough
to bear it. Therefore I consumed all the others to ashes, and left only
the trunk of Feng for your hands to burn, so that on this at least
you may wreak all your longing for a righteous vengeance. Now haste up
speedily, heap the pyre, burn up the body of the wicked, consume away
his guilty limbs, scatter his sinful ashes, strew broadcast his ruthless
dust; let no urn or barrow enclose the abominable remnants of his bones.
Let no trace of his fratricide remain; let there be no spot in his own
land for his tainted limbs; let no neighbourhood suck infection from
him; let not sea nor soil be defiled by harboring his accursed carcase.
I have done the rest; this one loyal duty is left for you. These must be
the tyrant's obsequies, this the funeral procession of the fratricide.
It is not seemly that he who stripped his country of her freedom should
have his ashes covered by his country's earth.

"Besides, why tell again my own sorrows? Why count over my troubles?
Why weave the thread of my miseries anew? Ye know them more fully than I
myself. I, pursued to the death by my stepfather, scorned by my mother,
spat upon by friends, have passed my years in pitiable wise, and my days
in adversity; and my insecure life has teemed with fear and perils.
In fine, I passed every season of my age wretchedly and in extreme
calamity. Often in your secret murmurings together you have sighed over
my lack of wits; there was none (you sai