=No secrets but between two.=
"Where could you have heard that?" said a friend to Grattan. "Why, it
is a profound secret." "I heard it," said Grattan, "where secrets are
kept--in the street." Napoleon I. used to say, "Secrets travel fast in
Paris."[677]
=Three may keep counsel if two be away.=
We are told in several languages "That the secret of two is God's
secret--the secret of three is all the world's;"[678] and the Spaniards
hold that "What three know every creature knows."[679] The surest plan
is, of course, not to trust to anybody; and this was the plan pursued
by Alva and by Q. Metellus Macedonicus, whose maxim, "If my tunic knew
my secret I would burn it forthwith," has been turned by the French
into a rhyming proverb of their own: "Let the shirt next your skin
not know what's within."[680] The Chinese say, "What is whispered
in the ear is often heard a hundred miles off." Truly "Nothing is so
burdensome as a secret" (French).[681] The Livonians have this humorous
hyperbole, "Confide a secret to a dumb man and it will make him speak."
King Midas's barber scraped a hole in the earth, and, lying down,
poured into it the tremendous secret that oppressed him; but the earth
did not keep it close, for it sprouted up with the growing corn, which
proclaimed with articulate rustlings, "King Midas hath the ears of an
ass."
=Tom Noddy's secret.=
Or, "The secret of Polichinelle" (French);[682] that is to say, one
which is known to everybody. This is what the Spaniards call "The
secret of Anchuelos."[683] The town of that name lies in a gorge
between two steep hills, on one of which a shepherd tended his flock,
on the other a shepherdess. This pair kept up an amorous converse by
bawling from hill to hill, but always with many mutual injunctions of
secrecy.
=Murder will out.=
"And a man's child cannot be hid," adds Lancelot Gobbo. The English
proverb is used jocosely, though derived from an awful sense of the
fatality, as it were, with which bloody secrets are almost always
brought to light. It seems to us as though the order of nature were
inverted when the perpetrator of a murder escapes detection. This faith
in Nemesis was expressed in the ancient Greek proverb, "The cranes of
Ibycus," of which this is the story. The lyric poet Ibycus was murdered
by robbers on his way to Corinth, and with his last breath committed
the task of avenging him to a flock of cranes, the only living things
in sight besides himself and his murderers. The latter, some time
after, sitting in the theatre at Corinth, saw a flock of cranes
overhead, and one of them said scoffingly, "Lo, there the avengers of
Ibycus!" These words were caught up by some near them, for already
the poet's disappearance had excited alarm. The men being questioned
betrayed themselves, and were led to their doom, and "The cranes of
Ibycus" passed into a proverb. This story may serve to show how
=Daylight will peep through a small hole.=
"Eggs are close things," say the Chinese, "but the chicks come out at
last." "A secret fire is discovered by the smoke" (Catalan).[684]
=To let the cat out of the bag.=
To betray a secret inadvertently. I cannot tell what is the origin of
this phrase. Can it be that it alludes to the practice of selling cats
for hares? A fraudulent vendor, while pressing a customer "to buy a
cat in a bag," (see p. 61,) might in an unguarded moment let him see
enough to detect the imposition.
=When rogues fall out honest men come by their own.=
They peach upon each other. "Thieves quarrel, and thefts are
discovered" (Spanish).[685] "Gossips fall out, and tell each other
truths" (Spanish).[686] "When the cook and the butler fall out we shall
know what is become of the butter" (Dutch).
=Tell your secret to your servant, and you make him your master=.
Juvenal notes the policy of the Greek adventurers in Rome to worm out
the secrets of the house, and so make themselves feared. "To whom you
tell your secret you surrender your freedom" (Spanish).[687] "Tell
your friend your secret, and he will set his foot on your throat"
(Spanish).[688]
=Walls have ears.=
"Hills see, walls hear" (Spanish).[689] "The forest has ears, the field
has eyes" (German).[690]
=What soberness conceals drunkenness reveals.=
"What is in the heart of the sober man is on the tongue of the drunken
man" (Latin).[691] "In wine is truth" (Latin).[692] "Wine wears no
breeches" (Spanish).[693]
=When wine sinks, words swim.=[694]
=When the wine is in the wit is out.=