(77.) Another wife, who does not give her husband any uneasiness on account of her disorderly behaviour, repays herself for it by worrying him about her high birth, her connections, the dowry she has brought him, her enchanting beauty, her merits, and by what some people call “her virtue.”
(78.) There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at least of envying those who are unmarried.
(79.) Dumb and stupefied grief189 is out of fashion; women weep, are garrulous, and so concerned about their husbandsʼ death that they do not forget to harp on every one of the details.
(80.) Is it impossible for a husband to discover the art of making his wife love him?
(81.) An insensible woman is one who has not yet met the person whom she is to love. In Smyrna there lived a very handsome young lady, named Emira, yet better known throughout the town for her strict conduct than for her beauty, and above all, for the indifference she showed for all men, whom, as she said, she beheld without any danger, and without any greater emotions than when in the company of her female friends and her brothers. She could not believe a thousandth part of all the follies ascribed to love at all times; and those which she saw herself, seemed to her unaccountable. Friendship was the only feeling she knew, and her first experience of it was through a youthful and charming maiden, who pleased her so much that she only thought how to continue it, never imagining that any other inclination could ever abate that feeling of esteem and confidence in which she now exulted. All her conversation was about Euphrosyne, for this was the name of her faithful friend, and the whole town talked about nothing else but about her and Euphrosyne; their friendship became a proverb. Emira had two brothers, both young, and so handsome that all the ladies of the city were in love with them, whilst she herself loved them as a true sister. One of the priests of Jupiter, who visited at her fatherʼs house, fell in love with her, and dared to declare his passion, but was repelled with scorn. A man of a certain age, who, relying on his noble birth and large estates, had the same assurance, met with the same repulse. She boasted of this, however; and even when in the company of her brothers, the priest, and the old noble, declared she was insensible to love. It seemed that Heaven reserved severer trials for her; yet these had no other effect but to render her more vain and to enhance her reputation as a maiden superior to love. Of three lovers smitten by her charms in succession, and whose affections she did not dread, the first, in a fit of passion, stabbed himself at her feet; the second, despairing of ever succeeding in his suit, went to seek his death in the wars of Crete; and the third ended his days in languor and passed his nights without sleep. The man who was to avenge them had not yet made his appearance. The aged noble, who had not been fortunate in his suit, was cured of his love by reflecting on his age and on the character of the young lady to whom he paid his addresses; however, he wished to visit her sometimes, and received her permission so to do. One day he introduced to her his youthful son, who united to a charming countenance manners full of dignity. Emira beheld him with some interest; but as he remained silent in the presence of his father, she thought he was wanting in intelligence, and could have wished him more. He saw her afterwards alone, and conversed long enough and intelligently; but as he did not look at her much, and talked still less about her and her beauty, she was surprised and somewhat indignant that such a nice-looking and clever young man should be so void of gallantry. She spoke of him to her friend, who expressed a desire to see him. He, then, only looked at Euphrosyne, and praised her beauty. At this the unfeeling Emira became jealous; she perceived that Ctesiphon spoke what he really felt, and that he was not only capable of gallantry, but even of tenderness. From that time she cooled towards her friend; yet she wished to see the couple together once more, to make quite sure that her suspicions were well-founded. The second interview showed her more than she dreaded to see, and changed her suspicions into certainty. She now avoided Euphrosyne; she no longer perceived in her that merit which charmed her before; she lost all pleasure in her conversation; she loved her no longer; and this alteration made her aware that love had driven friendship from her heart. Ctesiphon and Euphrosyne saw each other every day, loved one another, agreed to marry, and, finally, were married. The news spread through the town, and was talked about the more as it is not often that two persons who love one another are married. Emira heard of it, and became desperate; she now felt all the power of love; she again visited Euphrosyne only for the pleasure of anew beholding Ctesiphon; but that young husband still remained a lover, and in his new wife found all the charms of a mistress; he looked on Emira but as a friend of her who was dear to him. This unfortunate girl could no longer rest, and refused to take any nourishment; she got weaker and weaker, and at last her mind became affected; she mistook her brother for Ctesiphon, and spoke to him as a lover; she recollected herself, and blushed for her error, yet soon relapsed into greater errors, for which she did not blush, for she was no longer aware of them. Now she dreads men, but it is too late; that is the cause of her madness. She has lucid intervals, but these are the most painful to her. The youth of Smyrna, who saw her formerly so proud and so void of feeling, now think that the gods have punished her too severely.190
IV.
OF THE AFFECTIONS.
(1.)PURE friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.
(2.) Friendship can exist between persons of different sexes, without any coarse or sensual feelings; yet a woman always looks upon a man as a man, and so a man will look upon a woman as a woman. Such a connection is neither love nor pure friendship, but something out of the common.
(3.) Love arises suddenly, without any warning, through a natural disposition or through weakness; one glance of the fair transfixes us, determines us. Friendship, on the contrary, is formed gradually, in time, through familiarity and long acquaintance. How much intelligence, kindness of heart and affection; how many good offices and civilities are required among friends to accomplish in several years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute.
(4.) Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
(5.) As long as love lasts, it feeds on itself, and sometimes by those very means which seem rather likely to extinguish it, such as caprice, severity, absence, jealousy. Friendship, on the contrary, needs every assistance, and dies from want of attention, confidence, and kindness.
(6.) It is not so difficult to meet with excessive love as with perfect friendship.
(7.) Love and friendship exclude each other.
(8.) A man who is passionately in love neglects friendship, and one whose whole feelings are for friendship has none to give to love.
(9.) Love begins with love; and the warmest friendship cannot change even to the coldest love.
(10.) Nothing is more like the most ardent friendship than those acquaintances which we cultivate for the sake of our love.
(11.) We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time we love. Subsequent inclinations are less instinctive.
(12.) Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
(13.) Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.
(14.) A man who loves so ardently that he wishes he were able to love ever so many thousand times more than he does, yields in love to none but to a man who loves more intensely than he could wish.
(15.) If I were to admit that in the ebullitions of a violent passion one may love another person better than oneself, whom should I please most—those who love or those who are beloved?
(16.) Men are not seldom inclined to fall in love, but cannot succeed in their desire; they seek every opportunity of being conquered, but fail to meet it, and, if I may say so, are compelled to remain at liberty.
(17.) Those who love too violently at first, soon contribute individually to their loving one another less, and, finally, to their not loving one another any longer. It is not so easy to decide who is most to blame for this rupture, the man or the woman. Women accuse men of being inconstant, and men retort that women are fickle.
(18.) However particular we may be in love, we pardon more faults in love than in friendship.
(19.) It is a sweet revenge to a man who loves passionately to make an ungrateful mistress appear still more so, by his very actions.
(20.) It is a sorry circumstance to love when we have not a fortune large enough to render those whom we love so happy that there is nothing more they can wish for.
(21.) If a woman with whom we have been violently in love, and who has not returned our passion, afterwards renders us some important services, she will hardly meet with anything but ingratitude.
(22.) A lively gratitude denotes a great esteem and affection for the person who lays us under some obligation.
(23.) To be in the company of those whom we love satisfies us; it does not signify whether we dream of them, speak or not speak to them, think of them or think of indifferent things, as long as we are near them.
(24.) Hatred is nearer to friendship than antipathy is.
(25.) It seems that antipathy changes oftener into love than into friendship.
(26.) We confide our secret to a friend, but in love it escapes us.
It is possible to enjoy some peopleʼs confidence, and yet not their affections; he who possesses these needs no trusting, no confidence; everything is open to him.
(27.) In friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial to our friends; in those whom we love we discern no faults but those by which we suffer ourselves.
(28.) The first tiff in love, as the first fault in friendship, is the only one of which we are able to make good use.
(29.) Methinks that if an unjust, eccentric, and groundless suspicion has been called jealousy, that other jealousy which is just, natural, founded on reason and on experience, deserves some other name.
Our natural disposition has no small share in jealousy which does not always spring from a great passion. Yet it is a paradox for a violent love not to be esoteric.
Our idiosyncrasy often causes no suffering to any one but to ourselves; but in jealousy we suffer ourselves and give pain to others.
Those women who do not respect any of our feelings and give us so many opportunities of becoming jealous, should not be worthy of our jealousy if we were guided rather by their sentiments and conduct than by our affections.
(30.) Coolness in friendship and the slackening of its ties, arise not without cause; in love there is hardly any other cause for our ceasing to love but that of having loved to excess.
(31.) It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.
(32.) Love receives its death-wound from aversion, and forgetfulness buries it.
(33.) We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our perplexity when alone.
(34.) To cease from loving is a distinct proof that the powers of man are limited and his affections as well.
It is a weakness to love; it is sometimes another weakness to attempt the cure of it.
We are cured in the same way as we are comforted, for we cannot always weep nor love with all our heart.
(35.) There should be within the heart inexhaustible sources of grief for certain losses. It is seldom that either by our virtue or strength of mind we overcome a great affliction; we weep bitterly and are deeply moved, but afterwards we are either so weak or so flighty that we console ourselves.191
(36.) When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
(37.) For a long time visits among lovers and professions of love are kept up through habit, after their behaviour has plainly proved that love no longer exists.
(38.) To endeavour to forget any one is a certain way of thinking of nothing else. Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free ourselves. If we could do it, the only way to extinguish our passion would be never to think of it.
(39.) We should like those whom we love to receive all their happiness, or, if this were impossible, all their unhappiness from our hands.
(40.) To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.
(41.) However disinterested we may be with regard to those we love, we must sometimes constrain ourselves for their sake, and have the generosity to accept gifts.
A man may freely accept a gift if he feels as great a pleasure in receiving it as his friend felt in giving it him.
(42.) To give is to act; we do not suffer any pains by our liberality, nor by yielding to the importunity or necessity of postulants.
(43.) If at any time we have been liberal to those we loved, whatever happens afterwards, there is no occasion to think of what we have given.
(44.) It has been said in Latin192 that it costs less to hate than to love; or, in other words, that friendship is more expensive than hatred. It is true that we need not be liberal towards our enemies; but does revenge cost nothing? Or, if it be so pleasing and natural to harm those we hate, is it less so to do good to those we love? Would it not be disagreeable and painful for us not to do so?
(45.) There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we have lately laid under some obligations.
(46.) I do not know whether a benefit conferred upon an ungrateful person, and thus on a person unworthy of it, does not change its name, and whether it deserves any gratitude.193
(47.) Liberality consists not so much in giving a great deal as in giving seasonably.
(48.) If it be true that in showing pity and compassion we think of ourselves, because we fear to be one day or another in the same circumstances as those unfortunate people for whom we feel, why are the latter so sparingly relieved by us in their wretchedness?
It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
(49.) Experience proves us that if we are effeminate, and indulgent towards ourselves, and obdurate towards others, we show but one and the same vice.
(50.) A moiling, toiling man, who shows no mercy to himself, is only lenient to others by excess of reason.
(51.) Though the charge of maintaining a poor person may be very burdensome to us, yet a change of fortune, which makes him no longer our dependent, gives us no great pleasure, in the same way as our joy at the preferment of a friend is somewhat tempered by the small grudge we bear him for having become our superior or our equal. Thus we agree but ill with ourselves, for we should like to have others dependent on us, but, it must cost us nothing; and we should like to see our friends prosperous, yet when good fortune comes to them, the first thing we do is not always to be glad about it.
(52.) People send you invitations, ask you to come to their house, offer you even board and lodging, nay, their very fortune and their services; all this costs them nothing; but will they be as good as their word?
(53.) One faithful friend is enough for a man, and he is very fortunate to meet with one; yet he cannot have too many which may be of use to others.
(54.) When we have done all that we can do for certain people in order to acquire their friendship, and we find we have been unsuccessful, there is still one resource left to us, which is, not to do anything more.
(55.) To live with our enemies as if they might one day become our friends,194 and to live with our friends as if they might some time or other become our enemies, is equally opposed to the very nature of hatred, as well as to the rules of friendship. It may be a political maxim, it is certainly not a moral one.
(56.) We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better. We ought to choose friends of such a high and honourable character that, even after having ceased to remain our friends, they should not abuse our confidence, nor make us dread them as our enemies.
(57.) It is pleasant to visit our friends because we like and esteem them; it is a torture to frequent them because we want them; then we become applicants.
(58.) We should try and gain the affections of those to whom we wish to do good rather than of those who could do us some good.195
(59.) We do not employ the same means for bettering our position as we do in pursuing frivolous and fanciful things. We feel a certain kind of freedom in acting according to our fancy, and, on the contrary, a certain kind of thraldom in labouring for obtaining a place. It is natural to desire it ardently and to take little pains to obtain it, for we think that we deserve it without seeking for it.
(60.) He who knows how to wait for what he desires does not feel very desperate if he fails in obtaining it; and he, on the contrary, who is very impatient in procuring a certain thing, takes so much pains about it, that, even when he is successful, he does not think himself sufficiently rewarded.
(61.) There are certain people who so ardently and so passionately196 desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.
(62.) Those things which we desire most never happen at all, or do not happen at the right time, and under those circumstances when they would have given us the greatest pleasure.
(63.) We must laugh before we are happy, or else we may die before ever having laughed at all.
(64.) Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.
(65.) How difficult is it to be pleased with any one!
(66.) We imagine that it would be impossible to prevent our feeling some pleasure if we were present at the death of a wicked man, for then we could reap the harvest of our hatred, and get from him all that we could ever hope to get from him, namely, the delight his death causes us. But when at last this man really dies, and at a time when our interest will not permit us to rejoice, he dies either too soon or too late for us.
(67.) It is difficult for a proud man ever to forgive a person who has found him at fault, and who has good grounds for complaining of him; his pride is not assuaged till he has regained the advantages he lost and put the other person in the wrong.
(68.) As our affection increases towards those whom we wish to assist, so we violently hate those whom we have greatly offended.
(69.) It is as difficult at first to stifle the resentment of a wrong done to us as to retain it after many years.
(70.) It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.
(71.) It is as much from idleness as from weakness that we allow ourselves to be controlled.
No man should think of controlling another person all at once, and without some preliminaries, in some important matter of business which might be of great consequence to him and to his family; such a person would at once become aware of the sway and ascendency intended to be obtained over him, and would throw off the yoke out of shame or inconsistency. He should be tried first with trifling things, and then success is certain when attempting greater ones. Some people, who, at first, scarcely ventured to make a man leave for the country or to let him return to town, obtained such an influence over him at last, that he made his will, as they told him, and only left his own son what he was obliged to leave him.197
In order to control a man for any length of time and completely, a light hand is necessary, so as to let him feel his dependence as little as possible.
Some people allow themselves to be controlled up to a certain point, but beyond that they are intractable and ungovernable; suddenly all influence is lost over their feelings and mind, and neither rough nor gentle means, force nor address, can reduce them: yet, with this difference, that some act thus moved by reasoning and conclusive evidence, and others through inclination and constitution.
There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and wilfully go wrong for fear of being controlled.
There are others who allow their friends to control them in trifling things, and thence presume to control them in things of weight and consequence.
Drance198 would fain pass for a man who rules his master, though his master and the world know better. For a man in office to talk incessantly to his employer, a man of high rank, at improper times and places, to be always whispering or using certain words with mysterious intent, to laugh boisterously in his presence, to interrupt him when he speaks, to interfere when others address him, to treat with contempt those who come to pay their court to his master, or express impatience till they are gone, to stand near him in too unconstrained an attitude, to lean with his back against the chimney-mantel as his master does, to pluck him by his coat, to tread upon his heels, to affect a certain familiarity and to take such liberties, are signs of a coxcomb rather than of a favourite.
An intelligent man neither allows himself to be controlled nor attempts to control others; he wishes reason alone to rule, and that always.
Had I a friend, a man of sense, I should not object to confide in him, and to be controlled by him in everything, completely and for ever. I should then be sure of acting rightly without the trouble of thinking about it, whilst enjoying all the calm of a man swayed by common-sense.
(72.) All passions are deceptive; they conceal themselves as much as possible from others and from themselves as well. No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.
(73.) We open a book of devotion, and it affects us; we open a book of gallantry, and that, too, impresses us. If I may say so, it is the heart alone which reconciles things so opposed to one another, and allows incompatibilities.
(74.) Men are less ashamed of their crimes than of their weaknesses and their vanity. The same man who is openly unjust, violent, treacherous, and a slanderer, will conceal his love or his ambition for no other reason but to conceal it.
(75.) It rarely happens that a man can say he is ambitious, for if he has been so once, he remains so; but there comes a time when he admits he has been in love.
(76.) Men begin with love and end with ambition, and are seldom free from passion till they die.
(77.) Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason, but the greatest triumph is to conquer a manʼs own interests.
(78.) A man who is swayed by his feelings is more sociable and agreeable to converse with than one who is swayed by his intelligence.
(79.) There are certain sublime sentiments, certain noble and lofty actions, for which we are indebted rather to the kindness of our disposition than to the strength of our mind.
(80.) There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.
(81.) A man must be completely wanting in intelligence if he does not show it when actuated by love, malice, or necessity.
(82.) There are certain spots which we admire, others which we love, and where we long to pass our days.
It seems that our mind, our temper, passions, taste and feelings, are influenced by the places where we dwell.199
(83.) Benevolent persons should be the only ones to be envied, if there were not a better course open to us, which is, to excel them; thus we can avenge ourselves pleasantly on those whom we dislike.
(84.) Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own—one of the heart, the other of the mind.
(85.) During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtueʼs sake.
V.
OF SOCIETY AND OF CONVERSATION.
(1.)A man must be very inert to have no character
at all.
(2.) A fool is always troublesome, a man of sense perceives when he pleases or is tiresome; he goes away the very minute before it might have been thought he stayed too long.
(3.) Mischievous wags are a kind of insects which are in everybodyʼs way and plentiful in all countries. Real wit is rarely to be met with, and even if it be innate in a man, it must be very difficult to maintain a reputation for it during any length of time; for, commonly, he that makes us laugh does not stand high in our estimation.
(4.) There are a great many obscene minds, yet more railing and satirical, but very few fastidious ones. A man must have good manners, be very polite, and even have a great deal of originality to be able to jest gracefully and be felicitous in his remarks about trifles; to jest in such a manner and to make something out of nothing is to create.
(5.) If in ordinary conversation we were to pay great attention to every dull, vain, and puerile remark, we should be ashamed to speak or even to listen, and we should perhaps condemn ourselves to a perpetual silence, which would be more injurious to society than idle talk. We must, therefore, accommodate ourselves to all intellects, bear as a necessary evil the spreading of false news, of vague reflections on the Government or on the interests of princes, listen to the enunciation of fine sentiments which are always the same, and even allow Arontius200 to utter wise saws, and Melinda to speak of herself, her nerves, her headaches, and her want of rest.
(6.) We meet with persons who, in their conversation, or in the little intercourse we have with them, disgust us with their ridiculous expressions, the novelty, and, if I may say so, the impropriety of the phraseology they use, as well as by linking together certain words which never came together but in their mouths, and were never intended by their creators to have the meaning they give to them. In their conversation they neither follow reason nor custom, but only their own eccentricity; and their desire always to jest, and perhaps to shine, gradually changes it into a peculiar sort of dialect which at last becomes natural to them; they accompany this extraordinary language by affected gesticulations and a conceited kind of pronunciation. They are all highly delighted with themselves, and with their pleasant wit, of which, indeed, they are not entirely destitute; but we pity them for the little they have, and, what is worse, we suffer through it.
(7.) What do you say? What? I do not understand you. Will you be kind enough to say it again? I understand you still less. Oh, I guess your meaning at last; you wish to tell me, Acis, that it is cold! Why donʼt you say so? You wish to let me know that it rains or snows; say at once that it rains or snows. You think I am looking well, and you wish to congratulate me; say that you think I am looking well. But youʼll reply that it is so plain and clear, anybody might have said it. What does that signify, Acis? Is it so very wrong to be intelligible in speaking, and to speak as everybody does? There is one thing, Acis, which you, and men like you, who utter phébus201 want very much; you have not the smallest suspicion of it, and I know I am going to surprise you. Do you know what that thing is? It is wit. But that is not all. There is too much of something else in you, which is the opinion that you have more intelligence than other men; this is the cause of all your pompous nonsense, of your mixed-up phraseology, and of all those grand words without any meaning. The next time I find you addressing anybody, or entering a room, I shall pull your coat-tails and whisper to you: “Do not pretend to be witty; be natural, that is better suited to you; use, if you can, plain language, such as those persons speak whom you fancy are without wit; then, perhaps, we may think you have some yourself.”
(8.) Who, that goes into society, can help meeting with certain vain, fickle, familiar, and positive people who monopolise all conversation, and compel every one else to listen to them? They can be heard in the anteroom, and a person may boldly enter without fear of interrupting them; they continue their story without paying the smallest attention to any comers or goers, or to the rank and quality of their audience; they silence a man who begins to tell an anecdote, so that they may tell it themselves according to their fashion, which is the best; they heard it from Zamet, from Ruccellaï, or from Concini,202 whom they do not know, to whom they never spoke in their lives, and whom they would address as “Your Excellency,” if ever they spoke to any one of them. They sometimes will go up to a man of the highest rank among those who are present, and whisper in his ear some circumstance which nobody else knows, and which they would not have divulged to others for the world; they conceal some names to disguise the anecdote they relate and to prevent the real persons being found out; you ask them to let you have these names, you urge them in vain. There are some things they must not tell, and some persons whom they cannot name; they have given their word of honour not to do so; it is a secret, a mystery of the greatest importance; moreover, you ask an impossibility. You might wish to learn something from them, but they know neither the facts nor the persons.203
(9.) Arrias has read and seen everything, at least he would lead you to think so; he is a man of universal knowledge, or pretends to be, and would rather tell a falsehood than be silent or appear to ignore anything. Some person is talking at meal-time in the house of a man of rank of a northern court; he interrupts and prevents him telling what he knows; he goes hither and thither in that distant country as if he were a native of it; he discourses about the habits of its court, the native women, the laws and customs of the land; he tells many little stories which happened there, thinks them very entertaining, and is the first to laugh loudly at them. Somebody presumes to contradict him, and clearly proves to him that what he says is untrue. Arrias is not disconcerted; on the contrary, he grows angry at the interruption, and exclaims: “I aver and relate nothing but what I know on excellent authority; I had it from Sethon, the French ambassador at that court, who only a few days ago came back to Paris, and is a particular friend of mine; I asked him several questions, and he replied to them all without concealing anything.” He continues his story with greater confidence than he began it, till one of the company informs him that the gentleman whom he has been contradicting was Sethon himself, but lately arrived from his embassy.204
(10.) In conversation there is a middle course between a certain backwardness in speaking or a kind of incogitancy which leads us to wander away from the subject under discussion, so as to make us ask untimely questions or return silly answers, and between paying too great attention to the least word said, in order to improve upon it, to joke about it, to discover in it some mystery hidden to all others, to find something shrewd and subtle in it, only to have an opportunity of showing how clever we are.
(11.) Any one who is infatuated with himself and quite convinced he is very clever, only shows that he has but very little intelligence or none at all. It is a misfortune for a man to listen to the conversation of such a person. What a great many affected phrases he has to endure! How many of those fanciful words which appear of a sudden, live for a short time, and then are never heard again! If such a person relates some trifling event, it is not so much to give some information to his hearers, as merely for the honour of telling it and of telling it cleverly. He amplifies it till it becomes a romance; he makes the people connected with it think as he does; he puts his own trivial expressions in their mouths, and renders them, like himself, very talkative; he falls then into some parentheses which may pass for episodes, and by which speaker and hearers forget what the story really was about. It is difficult to say what might have become of them, had not somebody fortunately come in to break up the company and put an end to the narrative.
(12.) Theodectes205 is heard in the anteroom; the nearer he comes the more he raises his voice; he enters, he laughs, he shouts, he vociferates; everybody stops his ears; he is a mere thunderer, and no less to be dreaded for what he says as for the loud tone in which he speaks. He becomes quiet and less boisterous only to stammer out some idle talk and some nonsense. So little regard has he for time, individuals, or decency, that he offends every one without intending it; before he has taken a seat he has already insulted the whole company. When dinner is served, he is the first to sit down, and always in the place of honour; the ladies are to the right and left of him, but he eats, drinks, talks, banters, and interrupts every one at the same time; he has no respect for any one, neither for master nor guests, and takes advantage of the foolish way they look up to him. Is it he or Euthydemes who is the host? He assumes all authority while at dinner; and it is better to give way to him than to quarrel with him about it. Neither eating nor drinking improve his temper. If some gambling is going on, and if he wins, he banters his antagonist and insults him; the laughers are on his side, and there is no sort of folly they do not overlook in him. At last I leave him and go away, unable to bear any longer with Theodectes and those who bear with him.
(13.) Troïlus is useful to those who have too much wealth; he eases them of their onerous superfluity, and saves them the trouble of hoarding up money, of making contracts, locking trunks, carrying keys about, and of dreading to be robbed by servants. He assists them in their pleasures, and afterwards is able to serve them in their passions; in a short time he regulates and dictates their conduct; he is the oracle of the house, whose decisions are anxiously expected, nay, even anticipated and surmised; he orders a slave to be punished, and he is flogged; another to be freed, and he is set at liberty. If a parasite does not make him laugh, he perhaps does not please him, and therefore must be dismissed. The master of the house may consider himself lucky if Troïlus leaves him his wife and children. If at table he declares that a certain dish is excellent, the master and the guests, who did not pay much attention to it, find it also excellent, and cannot eat enough of it; if, on the contrary, he says of some other dish that it is insipid, those who were just beginning to enjoy it dare not swallow the piece they had in their mouths, but throw it on the floor;206 every eye is on him, and every one observes his looks and his countenance before giving an opinion on the wine or the dishes before them. Do not look for him anywhere else but in the house of an opulent man, whose adviser he is; there he eats, sleeps, digests his food, quarrels with his servant, gives audience to those whom he employs, and puts off his creditors; he lays down the law in the drawing-room, and receives there the adulation and homage of those persons, who, more cunning than the rest, only wish to curry favour with the master through Troïlusʼ intercession. If any one enters who is unfortunate enough to have a countenance which Troïlus does not like, he frowns and turns away his head; if a stranger accosts him, he sits still, and if the latter sits down close to him, he leaves his seat; if he talks to him, he does not reply, and if he continues to speak, Troïlus stalks away into another chamber; if the stranger follows him, he makes for the stairs, and would rather climb from one storey to another or throw himself out of a window, than encounter a man whose face and voice he dislikes. Both are very charming in Troïlus, and he has turned them to good account to insinuate himself or to overcome a difficulty. At last he considers everything unworthy of his attention, and he scorns to keep his position207 or to continue to please by exercising any of those talents by which he first brought himself into notice. It is a condescension if sometimes he leaves off his musings and his taciturnity to contradict, and deigns once a day to show his wit, though only to criticise. Do not expect him to listen to what you may have to say, to be courteous, or to commend you, for you are not even sure that he will permit you to approve him, or allow you to be polite.208
(14.) Do not interrupt a stranger whom you meet by chance in a stage-coach, at an entertainment, or at any public exhibition; and if you listen to him, it will not be long before youʼll know who he is; heʼll tell you his name, his residence, his native country, what his property is worth, his position, and his fatherʼs, his motherʼs family, his kindred, his family connections, and even his coat-of-arms; for he will soon let you know that he is nobly born, and that he has a castle beautifully furnished, a suitable retinue, and a carriage.209
(15.) Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously study everything they say, and in conversation bore us as painfully as was the travail of their mind; they are, as it were, made up of phrases and quaint expressions, whilst their gestures are as affected as their behaviour. They call themselves “purists,”210 and do not venture to say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be. Nothing comes from them worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and unrestrained; they speak correctly,211 but they are very tiresome.
(16.) The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you. Most men rather please than admire you; they seek less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and applauded; the most delicate of pleasures is to please another person.
(17.) Too much imagination is to be avoided in our conversation and in our writings, as it often gives rise to idle and puerile ideas, neither tending to perfect our taste nor to improve our conduct. Our thoughts should originate from sound sense and reasoning, and always be the result of our judgment.
(18.) It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence.
(19.) To say simply that a certain thing is good or bad, and to state the reasons for its being so, requires some common-sense and power of expression, which is not so easily found. A much shorter way is to give oneʼs opinion peremptorily, which is a convincing proof a man is right in his statement, namely, that the thing is execrable or wonderful.
(20.) Nothing is more displeasing to Heaven and to men than to confirm everything said in conversation, and even the most trifling subjects, with long and disgusting oaths. Whether a gentleman merely says “Yes” or “No,” he deserves to be believed; his reputation swears for him, adds weight to his words, and obtains for him every confidence.212
(21.) He who continually affirms he is a man of honour and honest as well, that he wrongs no man but wishes the harm he has done to others to fall on himself, and raps out an oath to be believed, does not even know how to imitate an honest man.
An honest man, with all his modesty, cannot prevent people saying of him what a dishonest man says of himself.
(22.) Cléon213 talks always rather rudely or inaccurately; he does either the one or the other; but he says he cannot help it, and that it is his natural disposition to speak just as he thinks.
(23.) There are such things as to speak well, to speak easily, to speak correctly, and to speak seasonably. We offend against the last way of speaking if we mention a sumptuous entertainment we have just been present at before people who have not had enough to eat; if we boast of our good health before invalids; if we talk of our riches, our income, and our fine furniture to a man who has not so much as an income or a dwelling; in a word, if we speak of our prosperity before people who are wretched; such a conversation is too much for them, and the comparison which they then make between their condition and ours is very painful.
(24.) “As for you,” says Euthyphron,214 “you are rich, or ought to be so, for you have a yearly income of ten thousand livres,215 all from land. I think that glorious! charming! and a man could be happy with much less.” The person who talks in this fashion has fifty thousand livres a year, and thinks he has not half what he deserves. He settles what youʼll have to pay, values what you are worth, determines what you have to spend; and if he thought you deserved a better fortune, and even such a one as he himself aspires to, he would be certain to wish it to you. He is not the only man who makes such wretched estimations or such odious comparisons; the world is full of Euthyphrons.
(25.) A person inclined to the usual flattery, and accustomed to praise and exaggeration, congratulates216
Theodemus on a sermon he did not hear, and of which no one had, as yet, given him an account. He extols his genius, his delivery, and, above all, his excellent memory, when, in truth, Theodemus had stopped short in the middle of his sermon, and had forgotten what he wished to say.217
(26.) Some abrupt, restless, conceited men, who are unemployed, and have no manner of business to call them away, will dismiss you from their presence in a few words, and only think to get rid of you; you are still speaking to them, and they are already gone and have disappeared. They are as impertinent as those people who stop you only to bore you; but the former are perhaps less irksome.
(27.) To speak and to offend is with some people but one and the same thing; they are biting and bitter; their words are steeped in gall and wormwood; sneers as well as insolent and insulting remarks flow from their lips. It had been well for them had they been born mute or stupid; the little vivacity and intelligence they have prejudices them more than dulness does others; they are not always satisfied with giving sharp answers, they often attack arrogantly those who are present, and damage the reputation of those who are absent; they butt all round like rams, for rams, of course, must use their horns. We therefore do not expect, by our sketch of them, to change such coarse, restless, and stubborn individuals. The best thing a man can do is to take to his heels as soon as he perceives them, without even turning round to look behind him.218
(28.) There are persons of such a disposition or character that a man ought never to be compromised with them; of such persons he should complain as little as possible, and not even be permitted to vanquish them in arguments.
(29.) When two persons have had a violent quarrel, of whom one is in the right and the other is in the wrong, the bystanders, for fear of being appealed to, or through a certain frowardness which always seemed to me ill-timed, condemn both. This is an important lesson, and a weighty and necessary reason for going away, even when a coxcomb is seen in quite another direction, so as to avoid sharing in his disgrace.
(30.) I hate a man whom I cannot accost or salute before he bows to me, without debasing myself in his eyes, or sharing in the good opinion he has of himself. Montaigne would say:219 “I will have elbow-room: I will be courteous and affable according to my fancy, without fear or remorse. I cannot strive against my inclination nor go contrary to my disposition, which leads me to address myself to every one whom I meet. If such a person is my equal and not my enemy, I anticipate his courtesy; I ask him about his temper and his health, I offer him my services without any haggling, and am not always on my guard, as some people say. That man displeases me who by my knowledge of his habits and behaviour deprives me of such liberty and freedom.
How should I remember, as soon as I see him afar off, to put on a grave and important look, and to let him know that I think I am as good as he, and better? To do this I must call to mind all my good qualities and points, and his bad ones, so as to compare them together. This is too much trouble for me, and I am not at all able of showing such an abrupt and sudden presence of mind; even if I had been successful at first, I am sure I should give way and lose my head a second time, for I cannot put any restraint on myself nor assume a certain haughtiness for any man.”220
(31.) We may be virtuous, intelligent, and well-behaved, and yet be unbearable. By our manners, which we consider of no consequence, the world often forms either a good or a bad opinion of us; a little care to appear obliging and polite will prevent its condemning us. The least thing is enough to make people believe that we are proud, impolite, haughty, and disobliging; but, on the other hand, still less is needed to make them esteem us.
(32.) Politeness does not always produce kindness of heart, justice, complacency, or gratitude, but it gives to a man at least the appearance of it, and makes him seem externally what he really should be.
We may define all the essentials of politeness, but we cannot determine how and where they should be used; they depend on ordinary habits and customs, are connected with times and places, and are not the same in both sexes nor in different ranks of life; intelligence alone cannot find this out; politeness is acquired and perfected by imitation. Only some persons are naturally disposed to be polite, as others are in acquiring great talents and solid virtue. Politeness tends, undoubtedly, to advance merit and to render it agreeable; a man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
The very essence of politeness seems to be to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.
(33.) It is an offence against politeness to bestow excessive praise on a personʼs singing or playing before any other who has sung or played for you, or to commend another poet in the presence of those who have read you their verses.
(34.) A man may be giving entertainments and feasts to certain persons, may make them presents, and let them enjoy themselves, and he may do this well; but he will do much better by acting according to their inclinations.
(35.) It is more or less rude to scorn indiscriminately all kinds of praise; we ought to be proud of that which comes from honest men, who praise sincerely those things in us which are really commendable.
(36.) An intelligent man, who is naturally proud, abates nothing of his pride and haughtiness because he is poor; on the contrary, if anything will mollify him and make him more pliant and sociable, it is a little prosperity.
(37.) Not to be able to bear with all bad-tempered people with whom the world is crowded, shows that a man has not a good temper himself: small change is as necessary in business as golden coin.
(38.) To live with people who have been quarrelling and to whose complaints you have to listen, is like being in a court of justice from morning till night listening to pleadings and lawsuits.
(39.) Two persons had all their lives been very intimate with one another; their incomes were in common, they lived together, and were never out of one anotherʼs sight. After fourscore years they thought it was time to part and put an end to their intimacy; they had then but one day to live, and dared not attempt to pass it together: they hastened to break before death, as their complacency would hold out no longer. They would have been good models had they not lived so long, for had they died one moment sooner, they still would have been good friends and have left behind them a rare example of perseverance in friendship.221
(40.) Families are often disturbed by mistrust, jealousy, and antipathy, while outwardly they seem happy, peaceable, and cheerful, and we suppose they enjoy a tranquillity which does not exist; there are very few who can bear investigation. The visit you pay only interrupts a domestic quarrel which awaits but your departure to break out afresh.
(41.) In all societies common-sense always gives way first. The most sensible people often are swayed by a most foolish and eccentric personage; they study his weakness, his temper, his fancies, and put up with them; they avoid thwarting him, and everybody gives him his way; when his countenance betrays he is cheerful, he is commended; they are grateful to him for not being always insufferable; he is feared, considered, obeyed, and sometimes beloved.
(42.) None but those persons who have had aged relatives, or those who have them still, and whose heirs they may become, can tell what they had, or have now, to endure.
(43.) Cleantes222 is a very worthy man; he has taken unto himself a wife, who is the best and most sensible person in the world; both, in their ways, are the life and soul of the company they keep; a more straightforward and more polite behaviour than theirs is nowhere to be met with. They are to part to-morrow, and the deed of separation is already drawn up at the lawyerʼs. Surely they must possess certain merits which do not harmonise together and certain virtues which are incompatible.
(44.) A man may be sure of the dowry, the jointure, and his marriage settlements, but scarcely of the contract the parents have entered upon to board and lodge the young couple for a certain time;223 for that depends on the frail harmony between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law, which often ends the first year of the marriage.
(45.) A father-in-law loves both his son and daughter-in-law, a mother-in-law her son and not her daughter-in-law; the latter pays her back in her own coin.
(46.) What a step-mother loves the least in the wide world are her husbandʼs children; the fonder she is of her husband the worse step-mother she shows herself.
Step-mothers make of towns and villages complete deserts, and stock the country with more beggars, vagrants, servants, and slaves, than poverty does.
(47.) G ... and H ... are neighbours, living in the country;224 their lands are contiguous; they dwell in a secluded and solitary spot. Far from towns and all intercourse with men, we might have thought that the dread of being completely estranged from the world and from all society should have kept up their mutual intimacy; but it is difficult to say what trifling circumstance has caused their being at variance, renders them implacable, and transmits their hatred to their descendants. Relatives, or even brothers, never quarrelled about a thing of less consequence.
Suppose there were but two men on this habitable globe, the sole possessors of it, who should divide it between them, even then I am convinced that soon some cause of disagreement would spring up, though it were only about boundaries.
(48.) It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform ourselves to other menʼs opinions than to bring them over to ours.
(49.) I am now approaching a little town, and I am already on a hill whence I discover it. It is built on a slope, a river washes its walls and then meanders through a lovely meadow; a dense forest shelters it from cold winds and northern blasts. The weather is so bright that I can count its towers and steeples, and it seems, as it were, painted on the slope of the hill. I exclaim: “How agreeable must it be to dwell underneath such a pure sky and in such a delightful abode!” I enter the town, and have not spent there above two or three nights when I feel I am just like its inhabitants; I long to get away from it.
(50.) There is a certain thing which has never yet been seen under the canopy of heaven, and, in all likelihood, never will be: it is a small town without various parties, where all the families are united and all relations visit one another without reserve, where a marriage does not engender a civil war, where there are no disputes about precedence at the offertory,225 the carrying of the censer, or the giving of a cake to the church to be consecrated and distributed during mass, as well as about processions and funerals: whence gossiping, falsehoods, and slandering are banished; where the bailli and the president of the court, the élus and the assesseurs226 are on speaking terms together; where the dean is well with the canons, the canons do not disdain the choristers, and the choristers bear with the singing-boys.
(51.) Country people and fools are apt to get angry, and to fancy you make fun of them or despise them. You should never venture on the most innocent and inoffensive joke, unless it be with people of culture or intelligence.
(52.) A man should not pretend to show his talents in the society of men of rank; their very rank forbids it; nor with people of inferior degree who repel you by being always on their guard.
(53.) Men of merit discover, discern, and find out each other reciprocally; he who would be esteemed should frequent persons who are themselves estimable.
(54.) He who is of so lofty a rank as to be above repartee, ought never to joke in a racy kind of way.
(55.) There are some little failings which we freely abandon to censure, and about which we do not dislike being bantered; when we banter others we should select failings of the same kind.
(56.) It is a foolʼs privilege to laugh at an intelligent man; he is in society what a jester is at court—of no consequence whatever.
(57.) Banter is often a proof of want of intelligence.
(58.) You fancy a man your dupe, but if he only pretends to be so, who is the greatest dupe, you or he?
(59.) If you observe carefully those people who praise nobody, who are always finding fault, and are never satisfied with any one, you will discover them to be persons with whom nobody is satisfied.
(60.) The proud and disdainful will find precisely in society the contrary of what they expect, which is to be esteemed.
(61.) The pleasure of social intercourse amongst friends is kept up by a similarity of morals and manners, and by slender differences in opinion about science; this confirms us in our sentiments, exercises our faculties or instructs us through arguments.
(62.) Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each otherʼs little failings.
(63.) How many fine and useless arguments are laid before a person in great affliction to attempt to soothe him! Things from without which we call events are sometimes too strong for arguments and nature. Eat, drink, do not kill yourself with grief, think only to live, are magnificent admonitions, and impracticable as well. If we say to a man that it is not wise to unsettle his mind so much, do we not tell him in reality that he is a fool for being so unfortunate?
(64.) Advice which is necessary in all matters of business, is sometimes hurtful in social affairs to those who give it, and useless to the persons to whom it is given. You observe, perhaps, faults in manners and morals which are either not acknowledged, or, perhaps, considered virtues; you blot out some passages in a composition which please the author the most, and in which he thinks he has surpassed himself. By those means you lose the confidence of your friend without making him better or wiser.
(65.) Not long since certain persons of both sexes formed a society for intellectual conversation and interchange of ideas.227 They left to the vulgar herd the art of talking intelligibly; an expression used by them, and which was not very clear, was followed by another still more obscure, which was improved on by others still more enigmatic, which were always crowned with prolonged applause, so that at last, by what they were pleased to call refinements, sentiments, turn and delicacy of expression, they succeeded in becoming unintelligible to others and to themselves. Common-sense, judgment, memory, or the smallest capacity were unnecessary in their conversation; all that was wanted was a certain amount of intellect, and that not of the right sort, but of a spurious kind, and in which imagination was too predominant.
(66.) I know it, Theobaldus,228 you have grown old; but would you have me think you decline, that you are no longer a poet nor a wit, that you are now as bad a critic of all kind of writings as you are a wretched author, and that your conversation is neither ingenuous nor refined? Your careless and conceited behaviour reassures me, and convinces me of my error. You are the same to-day as you ever were, and perhaps better; for if you are so brisk and vivacious at your age, what name, Theobaldus, did you deserve in your youth, when you were the pet and the caprice of certain ladies who only swore by you, believed every word you uttered, and then exclaimed, “It is delightful! What has he said?”
(67.) We frequently speak hastily in conversation, often through vanity and natural inclination, seldom with the necessary caution, and only anxious to reply to what we have not heard; we follow our own ideas, and explain them without the smallest deference for other menʼs arguments; we are very far from finding out the truth, as we are not yet agreed upon what we are looking for. If any man could hear such conversations and write them down, he would now and then find many good things said without the smallest result.
(68.) Some time ago a sort of insipid and puerile conversation was in fashion, which turned on trivial questions about the affections, and what people please to call passion or tenderness. The reading of some novels first introduced this talk amongst the most gentlemanly men in town and at court, but they soon discarded it, and then the citizens took it up, as well as puns and plays on words.229
(69.) Some city ladies are so refined that they do not know or dare not pronounce the names of streets, squares, and public places, which they think are not noble enough to be known. They speak of the Louvre, the Place Royale, but they use certain circumlocutions and phrases rather than mention some names; and if, by chance, such a word escapes them, it is not without some alteration, and after some changes which reassure them; they are less natural in this than the ladies at court, who, when they have occasion to speak of the Halles, the Châtelet, or the like, simply say the Halles or the Châtelet.230
(70.) If people pretend sometimes not to remember certain names which they think obscure, and affect to spoil them in the pronunciation, it is through the good opinion they have of their own names.
(71.) When we are in a good temper, and when we can talk as we like, we often say silly things, which, in truth, we do not pretend to be anything else, and which are considered very good, because they are very bad.231 This inferior kind of joking, fit only for the mob, has already infected a great part of the youth at court. It is true we need not fear it will spread further, for it is really too insipid and coarse to thrive in a country which is the centre of good taste and politeness. However, it should be rendered distasteful to those who employ it, for though it is never used seriously, yet it continually takes the place of better things in their mind and in their ordinary conversation.
(72.) Between saying bad things or saying such good things which everybody knows, and pretending they are quite new, there is so little difference that I do not know which to choose.
(73.) “Lucanus232 has said a pretty thing. There is a fine expression in Claudianus.233 There is a certain passage in Seneca;”234 and then follow a good many Latin words, often quoted before people who do not know what they mean, though they pretend to understand them. The right thing would be to have sense and intelligence ourselves, for then we might dispense with the ancients, or after having read them carefully, we might still select the best and quote them pertinently.