Page:Secret History of the Court of the Emperor Justinian 1674.djvu/79

 did not many times consist with what he de­sired other people should believe. His impressions of hatred or love, I suppose, I have sufficiently described in what I have said of his actions. His anger he pushed on to the highest extremity, and when once he was provoked, he was ever implacable. His friendship was as unconstant, as his malice was obstinate; he put several to death who were his Creatures, but was never reconciled where he had once taken a Pique. He delivered up into the hands of his Wife, or some third person, those who were thought the greatest in his favor, and to whom he had given the greatest testimony of his kindness, to be sacrificed, and murdered with torments, though they would never have deserved death, but for their kindness to him. In effect, Justinian was constant in nothing but cruelty and covetousness, and those two good qualities were not to be removed.

The Empress, when he scrupled what she desired, would wheedle him with hopes of large sums of Money from the business which she recommended. He made no difficulty to en­act Laws, and to break them if it were to his profit, not judging of affairs according to the Laws which he had established, but according as the bribes were more or less, that he was to receive. When he plundered his subjects, and took away their Goods, though he knew he had no right; had suborned people to swear against them, or forged fraudulent Wills; he thought he did nothing amiss.

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