"Cruelty is not placated by tears, it feeds on them." "When vices flourish, he sins who does right." "God hasn't much power over a happy man." "Frankness is foolish against impudence." "A fluent companion is as good as a carriage." Ovid too had said that speech shortens the road, and Emanuel would some day bring the dictum into his discussion of space-time relationships.
"Whatever the soul of man demands of itself, that it obtains." He called this the highest point reached by the Stoics.
Emanuel was sure he could get whatever he demanded from himself, but after the disputation he was going to demand something from his father, something the Bishop hated to part with—money. Especially money for the object that Emanuel had in view: a journey to England to study there, and to study science.
The disputation had been dedicated to his father, with a sort of sincere gratitude in advance. And among the maxims he chose to dwell on were a number describing the misery of avarice. "Money only irritates the miser, it doesn't content him." "What ill do you wish a miser but a long life?" "The miser does nothing right except when he dies." Whereas "He receives who gives to a worthy man," and "The benevolent discover chances to give," and "Help is doubly grateful if offered over and above"; Emanuel stressed that even the learned Erasmus had said benefits shouldn't have to be extorted.
And, in a maxim like a sigh, the boy quoted from Publilius that one should "Love a just parent; bear with an unjust."
The disputation came to an end as it had begun, with a little bow to death. Emanuel, aged twenty-one, expatiated on the words: "While life is welcome is the best time for death." He declaimed that "It were best to die before by way of hoary locks, wrinkles and languid powers the transit is made to cold and weary death."
In this year, 1709, it was a transit that a great many young Swedes had been privileged to make. Charles XII, careless of the Publilius maxim that "Twice conquers he who in victory conquers himself," didn't know when to stop, and his luck had turned. In fact it had turned over a year before, when he chose to go south in Russia. His armies had been warring for over eight years. The worst frost of generations came to aid his enemies. His soldiers still followed him, because, as his chaplain said, "He was the last King who didn't say
