to wage together are no personal
quarrels. Let me embrace you, prince! Ah what happy days your blooming
youth recalls to me! Thus bloomed your father's youth! This was his
open, speaking eye; these his earnest, honest features; this his noble
bearing! Let me embrace you again; in you I embrace your younger
father. Have you never heard from him, prince, what good friends we
were at your age? That was the blessed age, when we could still abandon
ourselves to our feelings without restraint. But soon we were both
called to the throne, and the anxious king, the jealous neighbour,
stifled, alas, the willing friend.

PHILOTAS.

Pardon me, O king, if you find me too cold in my reply to such sweet
words. My youth has been taught to think, but not to speak. What can it
now aid me, that you and my father once were friends? Were! so you say
yourself. The hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship
bears the most deadly fruit of all; or I still know the human heart too
little. Do not, therefore, O king, do not prolong my despair. You have
spoken as the polished statesman: speak now as the monarch, who has the
rival of his greatness completely in: his power.

STRATO.

O king, do not let him be tormented longer by the uncertainty of his
fate!

PHILOTAS.

I thank you, Strato! Yes, let me hear at once, I beg you, how
despicable you will render an unfortunate son in his father's eyes.
With what disgraceful peace, with how many lands shall he redeem him?
How small and contemptible shall he become, in order to regain his
child? O my father!

ARIDAeUS.

This early, manly language too, prince, was your father's! I like to
hear you speak thus. And would that my son, no less worthy of me, spoke
thus before your father now.

PHILOTAS.

What mean you by that?

ARIDAeUS.

The gods--I am convinced of it--watch over our virtue, as they watch
over our lives. To preserve both as long as possible is their secret
and eternal work. Where is the mortal who knows how wicked he is at
heart,--how viciously he would act, if they allowed free scope to each
treacherous inducement to disgrace himself by little deeds! Yes,
prince! Perhaps I might be he, whom you think me; perhaps I might not
have sufficient nobleness of thought to use with modesty th