l I deny the charge, lest I bring shame on thee? But
I did wish it, and I shall never cease to wish it. Shall I admit it?
Then the work of thwarting the informer will come to an end. Shall I
call the wish for the preservation of that illustrious house a crime?
Of a truth the senate, by its decrees concerning me, has made it such!
But blind folly, though it deceive itself with false names, cannot alter
the true merits of things, and, mindful of the precept of Socrates, I do
not think it right either to keep the truth concealed or allow falsehood
to pass. But this, however it may be, I leave to thy judgment and to the
verdict of the discerning. Moreover, lest the course of events and the
true facts should be hidden from posterity, I have myself committed to
writing an account of the transaction.

'What need to speak of the forged letters by which an attempt is made to
prove that I hoped for the freedom of Rome? Their falsity would have
been manifest, if I had been allowed to use the confession of the
informers themselves, evidence which has in all matters the most
convincing force. Why, what hope of freedom is left to us? Would there
were any! I should have answered with the epigram of Canius when
Caligula declared him to have been cognisant of a conspiracy against
him. "If I had known," said he, "thou shouldst never have known." Grief
hath not so blunted my perceptions in this matter that I should complain
because impious wretches contrive their villainies against the virtuous,
but at their achievement of their hopes I do exceedingly marvel. For
evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature;
that it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst
schemes against the innocent, while God beholdeth, is verily monstrous.
For this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, "If God
exists, whence comes evil? Yet whence comes good, if He exists not?"
However, it might well be that wretches who seek the blood of all honest
men and of the whole senate should wish to destroy me also, whom they
saw to be a bulwark of the senate and all honest men. But did I deserve
such a fate from the Fathers also? Thou rememberest, methinks--since
thou didst ever stand by my side to direct what I should do or say--thou
rememberest, I say, how at Verona, when the king, eager for the general
destruction, was bent on implicating the whole senatorial order in the
charge of treason brought against Albinus,