Annex 25 (Book XXXI, chapter 20)
At first one has difficulty understanding how a prince who had several good qualities, who was not wanting in insight, who naturally loved the good, and finally, in a word, was son of Charlemagne, could have such numerous, such violent, such irreconciliable enemies, so eager to affront him, so insolent in his humiliation, so determined to destroy him : and they would have destroyed him twice irretrievably if his children, at bottom more worthy men than they, had been able to follow a project and agree on something.