explanation, forbade me to commit such a deed.” Or like Adam Smith: “I foresaw that my act would awaken no sympathy with me in the minds of the spectators.” Or his language may be borrowed from Christian Wolff: “I recognised that I should thereby advance neither the work of making myself perfect, nor the same process in any one else.” Or from Spinoza: “Homini nihil utilius homine: ergo hominem interimere nolui.” (To man nothing is more useful than man: therefore I was unwilling to destroy a man.) In short, he may say what one pleases.

But Titus, whose explanation is supplied by myself, will speak as follows: “When I came to make arrangements for the work, and so, for the moment, had to occupy myself not with my own passion, but with my rival; then for the first time