Lehal Library

xxiii Introduction intimately tied up with the scandal of all writers of fiction and history who in the quiet of their studies take vicarious enjoyment in the ruthlessness of the characters they describe – b​ ut with this difference: Machiavelli systematizes such behaviour and appears to recommend it, if only to those few who are committed to winning and holding ­political power. The author’s description, in a letter to a friend, of his state of mind when writing the book makes it clear what a relief it was, during these months immedi- ately following his dismissal, imprisonment and torture, to imagine himself back in the world of politics and, if only on paper, on a par with history’s great heroes. Come evening, I walk home and go into my study. In the passage I take off my ordinary clothes, caked with mud and slime, and put on my formal palace gowns. Then when I’m properly dressed I take my place in the courts of the past where the ancients welcome me kindly and I eat my fill of the only food that is really mine and that I was born for. I’m quite at ease talking to them and asking them why they did the things they did, and they are generous with their answers. So for four hours at a time I feel no pain, I forget all my worries, I’m not afraid of poverty and death doesn’t frighten me. I put myself entirely in their minds. In so far as The Prince remains a persuasive account of how political power is won and lost it is so because it eventually focuses on the mind, or, to be more precise, on the xxiv