Begin now, and try how sweetness and clemency will succeed.

Cinna is convict; forgive him, he will never henceforth have the heart to hurt thee, and it will be an act to thy glory." Augustus was well pleased that he had met with an advocate of his own humour; wherefore, having thanked his wife, and, in the morning, countermanded his friends he had before summoned to council, he commanded Cinna all alone to be brought to him; who being accordingly come, and a chair by his appointment set him, having ordered all the rest out of the room, he spake to him after this manner: "In the first place, Cinna, I demand of thee patient audience; do not interrupt me in what I am about to say, and I will afterwards give thee time and leisure to answer.

Thou knowest, Cinna,--[This passage, borrowed from Seneca, has been paraphrased in verse by Corneille.

See Nodier, Questions de la Literature llgale, 1828, pp.

7, 160.