Nothing subjects life to more difficulties than to receive with hospitality wrongdoers who have escaped from prison or are fleeing from some crime they have committed. Although the misery of a murderer, tortured by pangs of conscience and anticipating the most severe punishment, may touch the heart, yet to protect him is to encourage others to crime. There must be a measure in all things, and fixed limits are laid down which it is wrong to transgress, lest virtues themselves pass over into vice. While a generous man avoids the reproach of avarice, he would not bestow favors equally on the wicked and the deserving, nor are robbers and honest men to be equally received with hospitality. All who bestow kindnesses should take care: none deserve them but those who will later acknowledge them gratefully, and will return like favors. The wicked therefore are unworthy of affection, since they will perhaps repay kindness with death, for generally an ungrateful spirit is joined with other vices in a single breast. Evil men laugh at the credulity of others and if they can thus [deceive?] the good, boldly proceed to other crimes. Those who willingly protect criminals deserve the fate of the rustic who warmed a half-dead snake in his bosom.6