Chapter 15. The Service of a Sincere Friend Toward the King

¹ Not so the true friend: night and day he is concerned for his royal friend, and wears himself out with cares on his behalf—not looking to how he himself might profit and reap some private gain from the king’s power, but to how the king’s affairs may stand firm and secure. He will grieve him a little, so as to gladden him the more; he will speak sharp words, so as to sweeten the outcome. He does not bend to the king’s every whim, nor act as a mere shadow, nodding along with every nod and moving with every movement; but being truthful and his own man, he makes his friend’s concerns his own out of love.