tried the empress for a treasonable correspondence
with the king of Hungary. His own son, a youth of honor and humanity,
avowed his abhorrence of this flagitious act, and three of the judges
had the merit of preferring their conscience to their safety: but the
obsequious tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any
defence, condemned the widow of Manuel; and her unfortunate son
subscribed the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse
was buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most
offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of her
beauteous form. The fate of her son was not long deferred: he was
strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to pity or
remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it
rudely with his foot: "Thy father," he cried, "was a _knave_, thy mother
a _whore_, and thyself a _fool_!"

The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by Andronicus
about three years and a half as the guardian or sovereign of the empire.
His government exhibited a singular contrast of vice and virtue. When
he listened to his passions, he was the scourge; when he consulted his
reason, the father, of his people. In the exercise of private justice,
he was equitable and rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality
was abolished, and the offices were filled with the most deserving
candidates, by a prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish.
He prohibited the inhuman practice of pillaging the goods and persons of
shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so long the objects of oppression
or neglect, revived in prosperity and plenty; and millions applauded the
distant blessings of his reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of
his daily cruelties. The ancient proverb, That bloodthirsty is the man
who returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much
truth, to 'Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified for the third time
in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a black list
of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his
greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only comfort of
his exile was the sacred hope and promise of revenge. The necessary
extinction of the young emperor and his mother imposed the fatal
obligation of extirpating the friends, who hated, and might punish, the
assassin; and the repetition of murder rendered him less willing, and
less able, to forgive. A