some water from the river or who walk on _terra firma_; he knows how to
convert reeds, rushes, and nettles into gold;[286] he listens to all
projects, and proposes everything he hears. The prince gives nothing to
any one but at Ergastusʼ expense, and bestows no favours but what are
his due, for his desire to have and to possess is never appeased. He
would even deal in arts and sciences, and farm out harmony; were his
advice to be taken, the people, for the pleasure of seeing him wealthy,
and with a pack of hounds and a stable, would forget the music of
Orpheus and be satisfied with his.
(29.) Have no dealings with Crito,[287] who only looks after his own
advantages; the snare is always ready spread for those who wish to
acquire his office, his estate, or anything he possesses, for his
conditions will be exorbitant. There is no consideration or arrangement
to be expected from one so wrapt up in his own interest and so inimical
to yours; he will always take a man in if he can.
(30.) Brontin,[288] according to common report, retires from the busy
world, and during a whole week sees none but priests; they enjoy their
meditations, and he enjoys his.
(31.) The people very often have the pleasure of seeing a tragedy
acted, and of beholding expire on the worldʼs stage the most hateful
personages, who did as much harm as they could whenever they appeared,
and whom they heartily detested.
(32.) If we divide the lives of the P.T.S.[289] into two parts, the
first, brisk and active, is wholly occupied in trying to oppress the
people, and the second, bordering on death, is spent in betraying and
ruining one another.
(33.) The man[290] who made your fortune and that of several others
was unable to keep his own, or secure a maintenance for his wife and
children after his death; they live in obscurity and in wretchedness.
You are informed of their miserable condition, but you do not think
of alleviating it; indeed you cannot do so, for you give a good many
dinners, you build a good deal; but out of gratitude you have kept the
portrait of your benefactor, which, it is true, has been removed from
your own private room to the anteroom. You have at least shown him some
respect, for it might have gone to the lumber-room.
(34.) There exists a stubbornness of temper, and another of rank and
condition, which both harden our hearts against the misfortunes of
others, and, I should even say, prevent us from pitying the evils which
befall our own family. A true financier grieves neither for the loss of
friends, wife, nor children.
(35.) “Away, fly; you are not far enough.” “Here,” say you, “I am under
another tropic.” “Pass under the pole and into another hemisphere;
ascend to the stars, if possible.” “I am there.” “Very well; then you
are pretty safe.” I look down and discover on this earth a rapacious,
insatiable, and inexorable man, who, in spite of everything he meets on
his way or may encounter, and at whatever cost to others, will provide
for himself, enlarge his fortune, and wallow in wealth.
(36.) To make oneʼs fortune is so fine a phrase, and of such charming
import, that it is universally used; it is to be met with in all
languages, is pleasing to strangers and to barbarians, is to be found
at court and in the city, has made its way into cloisters and scaled
the walls of convents for both sexes; there is no place so sacred where
it has not penetrated, no desert or solitude where it is unknown.[291]
(37.) A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money
increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of
brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.
(38.) A man must have a certain sort of intelligence to make a fortune,
and above all a large fortune; but it is neither a good nor a fine, a
grand nor a sublime, a strong nor a delicate intellect. I am at a loss
to tell exactly what it is, and shall be glad if some one will let me
know.
Custom or experience are of more avail in making our fortune than
intelligence; we think of it too late, and when at last we have made
up our mind to make it, we begin by committing some errors which we
have not always the time to repair; and this, perhaps, is the reason
why fortunes are far from common.
A man of small intellect wishes to get on in life; he neglects
everything, but from morning till evening he only thinks of one thing,
and dreams of it at night, namely, to get on in the world. He begins
early and from his very youth the chase after wealth; if a barrier
in front of him stops the way, he naturally hesitates, and goes to
the right or left, according as he sees an opening or thinks it most
convenient; and if fresh obstacles arise, he returns to the path he
just left, and determines, according to the nature of the difficulties,
sometimes to overcome them, sometimes to avoid them, or to take other
measures as his own interest, custom, and opportunity may direct him.
Does any traveller need such a good head and such great talents to set
out at first on a main road, and if that be crowded or impracticable,
to cross the fields, jump over hedges and ditches, come back into the
former road, and follow it until his journeyʼs end? Does he require so
much intelligence to attain the goal? Is it, then, so wonderful for a
fool ever to become rich or of repute?
There are some stupid, and I may even say weak-minded men, who occupy
handsome posts, and who die rich without any one ever supposing that
they contributed to it in any way whatever by the smallest industry or
their own labour. Somebody directed them to the fountainhead, or,
perhaps, chance alone has led them to it; then they have been asked if
they should like to have some water, and if so, to draw it; and they
have drawn it.[292]
(39.) When we are young we are often poor; either we have not yet
acquired nor inherited anything. We become rich and old at the same
moment; for seldom do men obtain every advantage at one and the same
time. But even if some persons are so fortunate, we ought not to envy
them, since they lose by their death sufficiently to deserve our
compassion.
(40.) A man is thirty years old before he thinks of making his fortune,
but it is not completed at fifty; he begins to build in his old age,
and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and
glazed.
(41.) What is the advantage of having a large fortune, unless it be to
enjoy the vanity, industry, labour and outlay of those who came before
us, and to labour ourselves in planting, building, and hoarding for our
posterity?
(42.) Men open their shops and set out their wares every morning to
deceive their customers; and they close them at night after having
cheated all day.
(43.) A tradesman turns over all his goods, that he may sell you the
worst; he has a certain preparation to give them a lustre, or else
holds these goods in a peculiar light, to conceal their faults and
to make them appear sound; he asks too large a price for them, so as
to sell them for more than they are worth; he has forged mysterious
trade-marks, so that people may believe they get the full value for
their hard cash; he employs a short yard measure, so that the buyer may
obtain as little for his money as possible, and has a pair of scales to
try whether the gold he receives be of full weight.
(44.) In all conditions of life a poor man is a near neighbour to an
honest one,[293] and a rich man is as little removed from a knave; tact
and ability alone seldom procure great riches.
A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business
the surest way of growing rich.
(45.) The shortest and best way of making your fortune is to let people
clearly see that it is their interest to promote yours.
(46.) Some men,[294] stimulated by the necessities of life, and
sometimes by a desire to gain money or glory, improve their secular
talents or adopt a profession far from reputable, and overlook its
danger and consequences for a considerable time; they leave it
afterwards from secret and devout reasons, which never stirred them
before they had reaped their harvest and enjoyed a comfortable income.
(47.) There exist miseries in this world which wring the very heart;
some people want even food; they dread the winter and are afraid
to live; others eat hothouse fruits; the earth and the seasons are
compelled to furnish forth delicacies; and mere citizens, simply
because they have grown rich, dare to swallow in one morsel what would
nourish a hundred families. Whatever may be brought forward against
such extremes, let me be neither unhappy or happy if I can help it; I
take refuge in mediocrity.
(48.) It is well known that the poor are sad because they want
everything and nobody comforts them; but if it be true that the rich
are irascible, it is because they may want the smallest thing, or that
some one might oppose them.
(49.) A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is
poor if his expenses are greater than his income.
There are some men[295] who with an annual revenue of two millions are
yearly still five hundred thousand _livres_ in arrears.
Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away
sooner than a large one.
Great riches are a temptation for poverty.
If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a
very rich man.[296]
If a man be poor who wishes to have everything, then an ambitious and a
miserly man languish in extreme poverty.
(50.) Passions tyrannise over mankind, but ambition keeps the others in
abeyance, and makes for a while a man appear to possess every virtue.
I once believed that Tryphon, whom I now know to practise every vice,
was sober, chaste, liberal, modest, and even pious; I might have
believed so still if he had not made his fortune.
(51.) All that a man wishes for is riches and grandeur; he falls very
ill, and death draws near, and though his face be shrivelled and his
legs totter, yet he is still talking of his fortune and his post.
(52.) There are but two ways of rising in the world, either by your
own industry or by the folly of others.
(53.) The features may indicate the natural disposition, habits, and
morals of a man, but it is the expression of the whole countenance that
discovers his wealth; it is written in a manʼs face whether he has more
or less than a thousand _livres_ a year.
(54.) Chrysantes, a wealthy and impertinent man, would think it a
disgrace to be seen with Eugenius, who is a man of merit but poor;
Eugenius entertains the same feelings towards Chrysantes; so there is
no chance of their ever quarrelling together.
(55.) When I see some persons, who formerly were the first to bow to
me, wait, on the contrary, till I salute them, and stand on ceremony
with me, I say to myself, “All this is mighty fine, and I am very glad
things go so well with them; it is quite certain that those gentlemen
live in larger houses, have handsomer furniture and better repasts than
formerly, and that for the last few months they have had a share in a
business by which they have already made some very good profit. Pray
Heaven they may in a short time come even to despise me!”
[Illustration: DESCARTES]
(56.) If thoughts, books, and their authors were depending on the rich
and on those who have made a large fortune, they would all be exiled,
and that without appeal. Such men act superciliously and lord it over
the learned! They keep their dignity with those poor wretches whose
merit has not advanced or enriched them, and who still think and write
sensibly! We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the
future will be for the virtuous and ingenious. Homer lives still and
will ever flourish, whilst the tax-gatherers and publicans are no
more and are utterly forgotten, and their native country and their very
names are unknown at present. Were there any farmers of the revenue in
Greece? What has become of all those important personages who despised
Homer, who were careful to avoid him, who never bowed to him, or, if
they did so, never called him “Sir,” who did not think him worthy of
being admitted to their tables, who looked on him as a man who was not
rich and had written a book? What will become of the Fauconnets?[297]
Will their names be transmitted to posterity as the name of Descartes
was, who, though born a Frenchman, died in Sweden?[298]
(57.) The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his
inferiors, makes him cringe servilely to those above him. It is the
very nature of this vice, which is neither based on personal merit nor
on virtue, but on riches, posts, influence, and useless knowledge,
to render a man as supercilious to those who are below him as to
over-value those who are of a loftier rank than they themselves are.
(58.) There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom
interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they
feel no other pleasure but to acquire money and never to lose it; they
are covetous and are always wanting ten per cent.;[299] they only
occupy themselves with their creditors; always dread the lowering or
calling in of certain monies;[300] and are absorbed and immerged in
contracts, deeds, and parchments. Such people are neither relatives,
friends, citizens, Christians, nor perhaps men; they have money.
(59.) Let us first except those noble and courageous minds, if there
are any yet on this earth, who assist those who are in want, contrive
to do good, whom no necessities, nor inequality of rank or fortune,
nor intrigues can separate from those they have once chosen for their
friends; and after having made this remark, let us boldly state a
lamentable truth, which makes us miserable to think about, namely, that
there is not a person in this world, however intimately connected with
us by social ties or by friendship, who likes us, enjoys our society,
has a great many times offered us his services, and sometimes even
rendered us one, who, when swayed by his own interests, would not feel
inwardly disposed to break with us and become our enemy.
(60.) Whilst Orontes[301] is increasing in years, in wealth, and in
income, a girl born in a certain family flourishes, grows up, becomes
very handsome, and enters on her sixteenth year. Orontes, who is then
fifty, of inferior birth, without intelligence and the smallest merit,
has to be entreated to marry that young, handsome, and witty girl, and
is preferred to all his rivals.
(61.) Marriage, which ought to be a source of all felicity, is often
to a man a heavy burden which crushes him through want of fortune. For
his wifeʼs and childrenʼs sake he is sorely tempted to commit fraud,
to tell falsehoods, and obtain illicit gains. It must be a dreadful
situation for any man to have to choose between roguery and indigence.
To marry a widow means, in plain language,[302] to make oneʼs fortune,
though this is not always the case.[303]
(62.) A man who has only inherited sufficient money to live comfortably
as a lawyer wishes presently to become an official, then a magistrate,
and finally a judge.[304] Thus it is with all ranks and conditions of
men straitened or limited in their means, who, after having attempted
several things beyond their power, force, if I may say so, their
destiny; they have neither sense enough to forbear being rich nor to
continue rich.
(63.) Dine comfortably, Clearchus,[305] make a good supper, put some
wood on the fire, buy a cloak, put hangings all round your room, for
you have no love for your heir; you even do not know him; you have not
got any.
(64.) When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save
for death; a prodigal heir first gives us a splendid funeral, and then
lavishes whatever money is left to him.
(65.) After his death a miser spends more money in one day than he
spent in ten years when he was alive; and his heir more in ten months
than the miser could find in his heart to part with during his whole
lifetime.[306]
(66.) When we lavish our money we rob our heir; when we merely save it
we rob ourselves. The middle course is to be just to ourselves and to
others.
(67.) Children, perhaps, would be dearer to their parents and parents
to their children, were it not for the latter being their heirs.
(68.) How wretched is manʼs estate, and how it makes one sick of life!
We have to moil and toil, to watch, to yield, and to be dependent,
to acquire a little money, or else we get it at the last gasp of our
nearest relations. He who can master his feelings so far as not to wish
for his fatherʼs death is an honest man.
(69.) A person who expects to inherit something becomes over-polite; we
are never better flattered, better obeyed, followed, courted, attended,
and caressed than by those who hope to gain by our death, and wish it
may happen soon.
(70.) As far as different places, titles, and inheritances are
concerned, all men look upon themselves as one anotherʼs heirs,
and, therefore, quietly and stealthily wish all their lives for one
anotherʼs death. The happiest man, under such circumstances, is he who
has most to lose by his death, and most to leave to his successor.
(71.) It is said of gambling that it makes all ranks equal; but there
is often such a strange disparity and such a vast, immense, and
profound chasm between this and that condition, that it pains us to
see such extremes meet together.[307] It is like discord in music, like
colours which do not harmonise, like words that clash and jar on our
ears, like those sounds and noises which make us shudder. In a word, it
is a subversion of all order and decency. If any one tells me gambling
is the custom throughout the whole western hemisphere, I reply that
perhaps it is one of the reasons why we are considered barbarians in
another part of the globe, and what the Eastern nations who travel
this way particularly remark of us in their journals. I have not the
smallest doubt that such an excessive familiarity appears to them as
disgusting as their _zombay_[308] and their other prostrations seem to
us incongruous.
(72.) An assembly of the provincial states or a parliament[309] meeting
to discuss a very important matter of business, presents nothing so
grave and serious as a table crowded with gamblers who play very high;
a melancholic severity is depicted on every countenance; implacable
towards one another, and irreconcilable enemies as long as they are
together, they neither regard relationship, connections, birth, or
social distinctions. Chance alone, that blind and stern divinity,
presides over the assembly, and pronounces her opinions like a
sovereign; people show their respect for her by remaining very silent,
and by being more attentive than they are elsewhere. Every passion
seems in abeyance for a while, to give way to one passion only, during
which the courtier neither pretends to be gentle, fawning, polite, nor
pious.
(73.) Even the smallest trace of their former condition seems utterly
obliterated in those who have made their fortune by gambling; they lose
sight of their equals, and associate only with persons of the highest
rank. It is true that the fortune of the die or _lansquenet_[310] often
puts them in the same place whence it took them.[311]
(74.) I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many
snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a manʼs money is
engulphed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful
rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish; that certain
men are sent forth to find out the precise time some person has landed
with newly got prize-money, or who has gained a lawsuit which has
brought him in a goodly sum, or who has received some presents, or who
has had a very lucky run at play; what young man of family has just
come into a large inheritance, or what desperate clerk will venture
the monies of his office on the turn of a card. Truly cheating is
villainous and rascally, but it is an old and well-known trade, and
practised at all times by the men we call professional gamblers. They
have a sign outside their doors, and this may be the inscription: “Here
cheating is done fairly;” for I suppose they do not pretend to be
blameless. Every one knows that if a man gambles in one of these houses
he is certain to lose. What to me is unaccountable, is that there
should always be as many fools as gamblers want, to make a living by
them.
(75.) Thousands have been ruined by gambling, and yet they tell you
very coolly they cannot do without it. What an idle excuse is this!
Is there any violent and shameful passion in existence to which we
cannot apply the same language? Would any one be allowed to say, he
cannot live without stealing, murdering, or rushing into all kinds of
excesses? It is allowable to gamble in a frightful manner, without
intermission, shame, or limit; to have no other aim but the total ruin
of your adversary; to be carried away by a desire for gain, thrown into
despair by losing or consumed by avarice; to risk on the turn of a card
or die your own future and that of your wife and children; or should we
do without it yet? And are there not sometimes worse consequences than
these at the gambling-table, when men are entirely stripped, obliged
to do without clothes and food, and cannot provide these for their
families?
I allow no one to be a knave, but I will allow a knave to play high,
but not an honest man, for it is too silly to expose oneself to a heavy
loss.[312]
(76.) There is but one sorrow which is lasting, and that is one
produced by the loss of property; time, which alleviates all others,
sharpens this; we feel it every moment during the course of our lives
when we miss the fortune we have lost.
(77.) The man who spends his fortune without marrying his daughters,
paying his debts, or lending it out on good security, may be well
enough liked by every one except by his wife and children.
(78.) Neither the troubles, Zenobia,[313] which disturb your empire,
nor the war which since the death of the king, your husband, you
have so heroically maintained against a powerful nation, diminish
your magnificence in the least. You have preferred the banks of the
Euphrates to any other country for erecting a splendid building; the
air is healthy and temperate, the situation delightful; a sacred
wood shades it on the west; the Syrian gods, who sometimes visit the
earth, could not choose a finer abode; the adjacent country is peopled
with men who are constantly busy shaping and cutting, coming and
going, rolling or carting away the timber of Mount Lebanon, brass and
porphyry; the air rings with the noise of cranes and machinery; and
that noise instils a hope in the breasts of those who pass that way
to go to Arabia, that, on their return home, they may see that palace
finished, with all the splendour you design to bestow on it before you,
or the princes, your children, make it your dwelling. Spare nothing,
great queen; make use of your gold and of the best workmanship of
first-class artists;[314] let the Phidiasses and Zeuxisses[315] of your
century display the utmost of their skill on your walls and ceilings;
lay out expensive and delightful gardens, so enchanting that they do
not seem created by the hand of man; exhaust your treasures and your
energy in this incomparable edifice; and, after you have brought it to
perfection, one of those herdsmen who dwell in the neighbouring sandy
deserts of Palmyra, and who has enriched himself by farming the tolls
of your rivers, will purchase one day, with ready money, this royal
demesne, and add fresh embellishments to it, so as to render it more
worthy of him and his fortune.[316]
(79.) This palace, this furniture, these gardens, those handsome
waterworks charm you, and on first beholding such a delightful mansion,
you cannot forbear expressing your opinion that its owner ought to
be superlatively happy. He is no more, and he never enjoyed it so
pleasantly and so quietly as you did; he never knew a cheerful day
or a quiet night; he sunk beneath the debts he contracted in adorning
it with those beauties which so delight you. His creditors drove him
from it, and then he turned round his head and looked upon it for the
last time; this affected him so much that it caused his death.[317]