By ties of trust and confidence, in each heart found.
These legions and those captains twelve, to that bad man
Had yielded up their every thought;—as mankind can.
Should he command to die, not one of them would fail
To give his life right joyfully,—without one wail.
A volume he prepared in name of each of them;
The matter of these registers not all the same.150
The style of every one was in a different guise;
From end to end each book’s contents were forgeries.
In one, the pangs of hunger mortified the flesh;