u may inflict upon us, it will still fall short of
what we deserve. But alas! the evil we have done ourselves is worse than
innumerable deaths: for what can be more afflicting than to live, in the
judgment of all mankind, guilty of the blackest ingratitude, and to see
ourselves deprived of your sweet and gracious protection, which was our
bulwark. We dare not look any man in the face; no, not the sun itself.
But as great as our misery is, it is not irremediable; for it is in your
power to remove it. Great affronts among private men have often been the
occasion of great charity. When the devil's envy had destroyed man,
God's mercy restored him. That wicked spirit, jealous of our city's
happiness, has plunged her into this abyss of evils, out of which you
alone can rescue her. It is your affection, I dare say it, which has
brought them upon us, by exciting the jealousy of the wicked spirits
against us. But, like God himself, you may draw infinite good out of the
evil which they intended us. If you spare us, you are revenged on them.

"Your clemency on this occasion will be more honorable to you than your
most celebrated victories. It will adorn your head with a far brighter
diadem than that which you wear, as it will be the fruit only of your
own virtue. Your statues have been thrown down: if you pardon this
insult, you will raise yourself others, not of marble or brass, which
time destroys, but such as will exist eternally in the hearts of all
those who will hear of this action. Your predecessor, Constantine the
Great, when importuned by his courtiers to exert his vengeance on some
seditious people that had disfigured his statues by throwing stones at
them, did nothing more than stroke his face with his hand, and told
them, smiling, that he did not feel himself hurt. This his saying is yet
in the mouths of all men, and a more illustrious trophy to his memory
than all the cities which he built, than all the barbarous nations which
he subdued. Remember your own memorable saying, when you ordered the
prisons to be opened, and the criminals to be pardoned at the feast of
Easter: 'Would to God I were able in the same manner to open the graves,
and restore the dead to life!' That time is now come. {239} Here is a
city whose inhabitants are already dead; and is, as it were, at the
gates of its sepulchre. Raise it then, as it is in your power to do,
without cost or labor. A word will suffice. Suffer it by your clemency
to be stil