A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only
secrecy of weak and cunning ones.
A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing
told him.
If a fool knows a secret, he tells it because he is a fool; if a knave
knows one, he tells it wherever it is his interest to tell it. But
women and young men are very apt to tell what secrets they know, from
the vanity of having been trusted. Trust none of these, whenever you
can help it.
Inattention to the present business, be it what it will; the doing one
thing, and thinking at the same time of another, or the attempting
to do two things at once, are the never-failing signs of a little,
frivolous mind.
A man who cannot command his temper, his attention, and his
countenance, should not think of being a man of business. The weakest
man in the world can avail himself of the passion of the wisest. The
inattentive man cannot know the business, and consequently cannot do
it. And he who cannot command his countenance, may e’en as well tell
his thoughts as show them.
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight
acquaintance, and without any visible reason. Be upon your guard, too,
against those, who confess, as their weaknesses, all the cardinal
virtues.
In your friendships, and in your enmities, let your confidence and your
hostilities have certain bounds: make not the former dangerous, nor the
latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business!
Smooth your way to the head, through the heart. The way of reason is a
good one; but it is commonly something longer, and perhaps not so sure.
Spirit is now a very fashionable word: to act with spirit, to speak
with spirit, means only, to act rashly, and to talk indiscreetly. An
able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions: he is
neither hot nor timid.
When a man of sense happens to be in that disagreeable situation, in
which he is obliged to ask himself more than once, _What shall I do?_
he will answer himself, Nothing. When his reason points out to him no
good way, or at least no one way less bad than another, he will stop
short, and wait for light. A little busy mind runs on at all events,
must be doing; and, like a blind horse, fears no dangers because he
sees none. _Il faut savoir s’ennuyer._
Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man
would rather you heard his story than granted his request. One must
seem to hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, unmoved, and the
tedious details of the dull, untired. That is the least price a man
must pay for a high station.
It is always right to detect a fraud, and to perceive a folly; but it
is often very wrong to expose either. A man of business should always
have his eyes open; but must often seem to have them shut.
In courts, nobody should be below your management and attention: the
links that form the court-chain are innumerable and inconceivable.
You must hear with patience the dull grievances of a gentleman
usher, or a page of the back-stairs; who, very probably, lies with
some near relation of the favorite maid, of the favorite mistress,
of the favorite minister, or perhaps of the king himself; and who,
consequently, may do you more dark or indirect good, or harm, than the
first man of quality.
One good patron at court may be sufficient, provided you have no
personal enemies; and, in order to have none, you must sacrifice (as
the Indians do to the Devil) most of your passions, and much of your
time, to the numberless evil beings that infest it; in order to prevent
and avert the mischiefs they can do you.
A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but
must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of
great power and interest. You must belong to a minister some time,
before anybody will belong to you. And an inviolable fidelity to that
minister, even in his disgrace, will be meritorious, and recommend
you to the next. Ministers love a personal, much more than a party
attachment.
As kings are begotten and born like other men, it is to be presumed
that they are of the human species; and perhaps, had they the same
education, they might prove like other men. But, flattered from their
cradles, their hearts are corrupted, and their heads are turned, so
that they seem to be a species by themselves. No king ever said to
himself: _Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto_.
Flattery cannot be too strong for them; drunk with it from their
infancy, like old drinkers, they require drams.
They prefer a personal attachment to a public service, and reward it
better. They are vain and weak enough to look upon it as a free-will
offering to their merit, and not as a burnt sacrifice to their power.
If you would be a favorite of your king, address yourself to his
weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very
successful.
In courts, bashfulness and timidity are as prejudicial on one hand,
as impudence and rashness are on the other. A steady assurance, and a
cool intrepidity, with an exterior modesty, are the true and necessary
medium.
Never apply for what you see very little probability of obtaining;
for you will, by asking improper and unattainable things, accustom
the ministers to refuse you so often, that they will find it easy to
refuse you the properest and most reasonable ones. It is a common but
a most mistaken rule at court, to ask for everything, in order to get
something: you do get something by it, it is true; but that something
is refusals and ridicule.
There is a court jargon, a chit-chat, a small talk, which turns singly
upon trifles; and which, in a great many words, says little or nothing.
It stands fools instead of what they cannot say, and men of sense
instead of what they should not say. It is the proper language of
levees, drawing-rooms, and ante-chambers; it is necessary to know it.
Whatever a man is at court, he must be genteel and well-bred; that
cloak covers as many follies, as that of charity does sins. I knew a
man of great quality, and in a great station at court, considered and
respected, whose highest character was, that he was humbly proud, and
genteelly dull.
It is hard to say which is the greatest fool; he who tells the whole
truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in
business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.
At court, people embrace without acquaintance, serve one another
without friendship, and injure one another without hatred. Interest,
not sentiment, is the growth of that soil.
A difference of opinion, though in the merest trifles, alienates
little minds, especially of high rank. It is full as easy to commend as
to blame a great man’s cook, or his tailor; it is shorter, too; and the
objects are no more worth disputing about, than the people are worth
disputing with. It is impossible to inform, but very easy to displease
them.
A cheerful, easy countenance and behavior are very useful at court;
they make fools think you are a good-natured man; and they make
designing men think you are an undesigning one.
There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret,
in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man
should tell it all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and
where to stop.
Ceremony is necessary in courts, as the outwork and defence of manners.
Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket-money at court;
where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency, that it
is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.
If a minister refuses you a reasonable request, and either slights or
injures you, if you have not the power to gratify your resentment, have
the wisdom to conceal and dissemble it. Seeming good humor on your part
may prevent rancor on his, and perhaps bring things aright again: but
if you have the power to hurt, hint modestly that, if provoked, you
may possibly have the will too. Fear, when real, and well founded, is
perhaps a more prevailing motive at courts than love.
At court, many more people can hurt, than can help you; please the
former, but engage the latter.
Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to
be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.
A man’s own good breeding is his best security against other people’s
ill-manners.
Good breeding carries along with it a dignity, that is respected by
the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity
of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of
Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one (though many a flattering
one) to Sir Robert Walpole.
When the old clipped money was called in for a new coinage in King
William’s time, to prevent the like for the future, they stamped on the
edges of the crown pieces these words, _et decus et tutamen_. That is
exactly the case of good breeding.
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments only give lustre; and
many more people see than weigh.
Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful art
of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
It is to be presumed that a man of common-sense, who does not desire
to please, desires nothing at all, since he must know that he cannot
obtain anything without it.
A skilful negotiator will most carefully distinguish between the little
and the great objects of his business, and will be as frank and open in
the former as he will be secret and pertinacious in the latter.
He will, by his manners and address, endeavor, at least, to make his
public adversaries his personal friends. He will flatter and engage the
man, while he counterworks the minister; and he will never alienate
people’s minds from him, by wrangling for points, either absolutely
unattainable, or not worth attaining. He will make even a merit of
giving up what he could not or would not carry, and sell a trifle for a
thousand times its value.
A foreign minister, who is concerned in great affairs, must necessarily
have spies in his pay; but he must not too easily credit their
informations, which are never exactly true, often very false. His
best spies will always be those whom he does not pay, but whom he has
engaged in his service by his dexterity and address, and who think
themselves nothing less than spies.
There is a certain jargon which in French I should call _un persiflage
d’affaires_, that a foreign minister ought to be perfectly master
of, and may use very advantageously at great entertainments in mixed
companies, and in all occasions where he must speak and should say
nothing. Well turned and well spoken, it seems to mean something,
though in truth it means nothing. It is a kind of political _badinage_,
which prevents or removes a thousand difficulties to which a foreign
minister is exposed in mixed conversations.
If ever the _volto sciolto_ and the _pensieri stretti_ are necessary,
they are so in these affairs. A grave, dark, reserved, and mysterious
air has _fœnum in cornu_. An even, easy, unembarrassed one invites
confidence, and leaves no room for guesses and conjectures.
Both stimulation and dissimulation are absolutely necessary for a
foreign minister; and yet they must stop short of falsehood and
perfidy: that middle point is the difficult one: there ability
consists. He must often seem pleased, when he is vexed; and grave,
when he is pleased; but he must never say either: that would be
falsehood--an indelible stain to character.
A foreign minister should be a most exact economist. An expense
proportioned to his appointments and fortune is necessary; but, on the
other hand, debt is inevitable ruin to him. It sinks him into disgrace
at the court where he resides, and into the most servile and abject
dependence on the court that sent him. As he cannot resent ill usage,
he is sure to have enough of it.
The Duc de Sully observes very justly, in his Memoirs, that nothing
contributed more to his rise, than that prudent economy which he had
observed from his youth, and by which he had always a sum of money
beforehand, in case of emergencies.
It is very difficult to fix the particular point of economy; the best
error of the two is on the parsimonious side. That may be corrected;
the other cannot.
The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does
not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon
his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for
instance, who should give a servant four shillings would pass for
covetous, while he who gave him a crown would be reckoned generous; so
that the difference of those two opposite characters turns upon one
shilling. A man’s character, in that particular, depends a great deal
upon the report of his own servants; a mere trifle above common wages
makes their report favorable.
Take care always to form your establishment so much within your income
as to leave a sufficient fund for unexpected contingencies and a
prudent liberality. There is hardly a year, in any man’s life, in which
a small sum of ready money may not be employed to great advantage.