Sit subitum quodcunque paras, sit cæca futuri
Mens hominum fati; liceat sperare timenti,[1] —
(c) Ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit; miserum est enim nihil proficientem angi,[2] (a) still, it[3] is of much less authority [than formerly]. This is why the instance of Francis, Marquis de Sallusse, has seemed to me worthy of note.[4] For while he was lieutenant of King Francis in his army on the other side of the mountains,[5] and was in highest favour at our court and indebted to the king for the marquisate, which had been confiscated from his brother, there being indeed no occasion for him to do this,[6] — his inclination even pointing the other way, — he allowed himself to be so terrified, so it has been asserted, by the fine prognostications that were then current on all sides to the advantage of the Emperor Charles the Fifth and to our disadvantage (even in Italy, where those absurd prophecies had gained so much credence that in Rome a large sum of money changed hands on account of the belief in our downfall) that, after frequently lamenting with his intimates the disasters which he saw to be inevitably in store for the crown of France and for his friends there, he rebelled and changed his allegiance — to his great harm, however, whatever constellation was in the sky. But he behaved like a man torn by conflicting passions; for, having both cities and troops under his command, and the hostile army, under Antonio de Leyva, being close at hand (and we unsuspicious of what he was about), he might have done much worse than he did; for by his treachery we lost neither man nor town, except Fossan, and that only after a long struggle.
- ↑ Why did it please thee, ruler of Olympus, to add another care to anxious mortals, that through boding omens they know the calamities that are to come? … Be it sudden, whatever thou dost prepare; let men’s minds be blind to the future; let the timid man still hope. — Lucan, II, 4-6, 14, 15.
- ↑ It is no advantage to know the future; for it is a wretched thing to suffer suspense all to no purpose. — Cicero, De Nat. Deor., III, 6.
- ↑ That is, divination.
- ↑ See du Bellay, VI; de Thou, I, 37.
- ↑ In Italy.
- ↑ That is, to rebel and change his allegiance. See below.
