Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/346

172 me, would, in effect, promote tenfold suffering. For by driving away the flies now saturated with my blood, I should afford an opportunity to those that were empty and hungry to supply their place. And who doubts that the biting of a hungry insect is not ten thousand times more painful than that of one completely gorged,—unless the person attacked, be stone, and not flesh. (52)

My beloved, governors who are already enriched by plunder, are less likely to continue their oppression than they who are poor and needy.