Beware how you deform many good qualities by one vice, and mar the credit of so many meritorious deeds by a degree of guilt more than proportioned to the value of its object." 15.

While Masinissa heard these observations, he not only became suffused with blushes, but burst into tears; and after declaring that he would submit to the discretion of the general, and imploring him that, as far as circumstances would permit, he would consider the obligation he had rashly imposed upon himself, for he had promised that he would not deliver her into the power of any one, he retired in confusion from the pavilion into his own tent.

There, dismissing his attendants, he spent a considerable time amid frequent sighs and groans, which could be distinctly heard by those who stood around the tent.

At last, heaving a deep groan, he called one of his servants in whom he confided, in whose custody poison was kept, according to the custom of kings, as a remedy against the unforeseen events of fortune, and ordered him to mix some in a cup and carry it to Sophonisba; at the same time informing her that Masinissa would gladly have fulfilled the first obligation which as a husband he owed to her his wife; but since those who had the power of doing so had deprived him of the exercise of that right, he now performed his second promise, that she should not come alive into the power of the Romans.

That, mindful of her father the general, of her country, and of the two kings to whom she had been married, she would take such measures as she herself thought proper.