Après qu’entre leurs mains j’ai remis mon empire,
Pour m’arracher le jour l’un et l’autre conspire!”
But a later scene proves that Augustus is not even yet aware of all the accomplices; and the conviction of Æmilie as one of them, wrings from him, as Brutus from the elder Cæsar, the upbraiding cry, Et toi, ma fille, aussi!
One touching incident marks the horror of the murder of the Czar Paul in 1801. The dress of Ouvaroff, one of the conspirators, is said to have caused him to be mistaken by the Emperor for his son Constantine; and, according to Bignon, the last words which the unhappy monarch uttered were, “And you too, my Constantine!”
Very worthless objects have sometimes been very undeservedly Et-tu-Brutefied. The first Lord Holland, when forsaken by the selfish friends, as they have justly been described, with whom he had jobbed and made merry and laughed at principle, had yet retained enough belief in the social virtues to be made seriously unhappy by the conduct of his worthless companions, particularly by that of Rigby, the most worthless of them all;
“White-liver’d Grenville and self-loving Gower
Shall never cause one peevish moment more; ...
Slight was the pain they gave, and short its date;
I found I could not both despise and hate;