and rude.
To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as if
we were established.
Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is because
they think themselves more clever than we are.
Too great a hurry to discharge an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which good
fortune bestows upon their temper.
Pride is much the same in all men; the only difference is the method
and manner of showing it.
The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the
agitation of their hearts.
Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is
nevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders
them equal.
What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers
interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and
it is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and
women chaste.
Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few
wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the
design for which they expose themselves succeed.
If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.
Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what
we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence
of others.
We may find women who have never indulged in an intrigue, but it is
rare to find those who have intrigued but once.
Every one blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.
In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our
good qualities.
We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they
enable us to prove our tenderness for them.
Virtue in woman is often the love of reputation and repose.
He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection of
good men.
We frequently do good to enable us with impunity to do evil.
Every one praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.
He is really wise who is nettled at nothing.
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.[27]
In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is
not wholly displeasing to us.[28]
[Footnote 27: A maxim similar to this has been found in the writings
of other men. Thus Massillon, in one of his sermons, said, "Vice pays
homage to virtue in doing honor to her appearance"; and Junius,
writing to the Duke of Grafton, said, "You have done as much mischief
to the community as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that an
appearance of morals and religion are useful in society." Both,
however, lived in a period subsequent to that in which La
Rochefoucauld wrote.]
[Footnote 28: This maxim, which more than any other has caused La
Rochefoucauld to be criticized severely as a cynic, if not a
misanthrope, appeared only in the first two editions of the book. In
the others, published in the author's lifetime, it was supprest. In
defense of the author, it has been maintained that what he meant by
the saying was that the pleasure derived from a friend's misfortunes
has its origin in the opportunity thus afforded to give him help. The
reader should compare this saying with another that is included in
these selections, "We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our
friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them."]
The confidence we have in ourselves arises in a great measure from
that that we have in others.
Women for the most part surrender themselves more from weakness than
from passion. Whence it is that bold and pushing men succeed better
than others, altho they are not so lovable.
The great ones of the earth can neither command health of body nor
repose of mind, and they buy always at too dear a price the good they
can acquire.
Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a
fool content; that is why most men are miserable.
The harm that others do us is often less than that we do ourselves.
Magnanimity is a noble effort of pride which makes a man master of
himself, to make him master of all things.
BLAISE PASCAL
Born in France in 1623, died in 1662; educated in Paris;
became celebrated at seventeen for a work on conic sections;
became connected with the monastery at Port Royal, whose
doctrines he defended against the Jesuits; published
"Entretien sur Epictéte et Montaigne" in 1655; wrote his
"Provincial Letters" in 1656-57; in his last days engaged on
an "Apologie de la Religion Catholique" which, uncompleted,
was published in 1670 as his "Pensées."
OF THE PREVALENCE OF SELF-LOVE[29]
Self is hateful. You, Milton, conceal self, but do not thereby destroy
it; therefore you are still hateful. Not so, for in acting as we do,
to oblige everybody, we give no reason for hating us. True, if we only
hated in self the vexation which it causes us. But if I hate it
because it is unjust, and because it makes itself the center of all, I
shall always hate it.
[Footnote 29: From the "Thoughts." Many translations have been made of
Pascal's "Thoughts"--one in 1680 by J. Walker, one in 1704 by Basil
Kennet, one in 1825 by Edward Craig. A more modern one is by C. Kegan
Paul, the London publisher, who was also a man of letters. Early
translations from the older French, Italian and other Continental
writers have frequently come down to us without mention of
translators' names on title-pages or in the prefatory matter.]
In one word, Self has two qualities: it is unjust in its essence,
because it makes itself the center of all; it is inconvenient to
others, in that it would bring them into subjection, for each "I" is
the enemy, and would fain be the tyrant of all others. You take away
the inconvenience, but not the injustice, and thus you do not render
it lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it lovable only to
the unjust, who find in it an enemy no longer. Thus you remain unjust
and can please none but the unjust.
OF SELF-LOVE.--The nature of self-love and of this human "I" is to
love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It can not
prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries;
man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be
happy, and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect, and sees
that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love
and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion
and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in
him the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable. For he conceives
a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him
of his faults. Desiring to annihilate it, yet unable to destroy it in
its essence, he destroys it as much as he can in his own knowledge,
and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his care to the
concealment of his faults, both from others and from himself, and he
can neither bear that others should show them to him, nor that they
should see them.
It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a greater evil
to be full of them, yet unwilling to recognize them, because that is
to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like
others to deceive us, we do not think it just in them to require more
esteem from us than they deserve; it is therefore unjust that we
should deceive them, desiring more esteem from them than we deserve.
Thus if they discover no more imperfections and vices in us than we
really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who
cause them; but rather they who do us a service, since they help us to
deliver ourselves from an evil, the ignorance of these imperfections.
We ought not to be troubled that they know our faults and despise us,
since it is but just they should know us as we are, and despise us if
we are despicable.
Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity
and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in it a
wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth,
and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have an
erroneously favorable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than
indeed we are?
One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does not
oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all; it allows us
to remain hidden from men in general; but she excepts one alone, to
whom she commands us to open the very depths of our hearts, and to
show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the
world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable
secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as tho it were not. We can
imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the
corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one of
the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt
against the Church.
How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to
be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just
to do to all men. For is it just that we should deceive them?
There are different degrees in this dislike to the truth, but it may
be said that all have it in some degree, for it is inseparable from
self-love. This false delicacy causes those who must needs reprove
others to choose so many windings and modifications in order to avoid
shocking them. They must needs lessen our faults, seem to excuse them,
mix praises with their blame, give evidences of affection and esteem.
Yet this medicine is bitter to self-love, which takes as little as it
can, always with disgust, often with a secret anger.
Hence it happens that if any desire our love, they avoid doing us a
service which they know to be disagreeable; they treat us as we would
wish to be treated: we hate the truth, and they hide it from us; we
wish to be flattered, they flatter us; we love to be deceived, they
deceive us.
Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes
us further from truth, because we fear most to wound those whose
affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A
prince may be the byword of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing of
it. I am not surprized; to speak the truth is useful to whom it is
spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes them
hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more
than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not to
benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice.
This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher
classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always
an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual
illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us
in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on
this universal deceit; few friendships would last if every man knew
what his friend said of him behind his back, tho he then spoke in
sincerity and without passion.
Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself
and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth; he avoids
telling it to others; and all these tendencies, so far removed from
justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
Born in Paris in 1626, died in 1696; married in 1644 to the
Marquis de Sévigné, who was killed in a duel in 1651; lived
late in life in Brittany; wrote to her married daughter,
Madame de Grigman, the famous letters from which has
proceeded her fame.
I
GREAT NEWS FROM PARIS[30]
I am going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most
surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most
magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most
singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most
unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the
most public, the most private till to-day, the most brilliant, the
most inevitable; in short, a thing of which there is but one example
in past ages, and that not an exact one either; a thing that we can
not believe at Paris; how, then, will it gain credence at Lyons? a
thing which makes everybody cry, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" a thing
which causes the greatest joy to Madame de Rohan and Madame de
Hauterive; a thing, in fine, which is to happen on Sunday next, when
those who are present will doubt the evidence of their senses; a thing
which, tho it is to be done on Sunday, yet perhaps will not be
finished on Monday.
[Footnote 30: From a letter dated Paris, December 15, 1670. George
Saintsbury has described Madame de Sévigné as "the most charming of
all letter-writers in all languages." Translations of these letters
into English were made in 1732, 1745, 1764, and other years, including
a version by Mackie in 1802.]
I can not bring myself to tell you; guess what it is. I give you three
times to do it in. What, not a word to throw at a dog? Well, then, I
find I must tell you. Monsieur de Lauzun is to be married next Sunday
at the Louvre, to--pray guess to whom! I give you four times to do it
in,--I give you six,--I give you a hundred. Says Madame de Coulanges:
"It is really very hard to guess; perhaps it is Madame de la
Vallière."
Indeed madame, it is not. "It is Mademoiselle de Retz, then." No, nor she
either; you are extremely provincial. "Lord bless me," say you, "what
stupid wretches we are! it is Mademoiselle de Colbert all the while." Nay,
now you are still further from the mark. "Why, then, it must certainly be
Mademoiselle de Crequy." You have it not yet. Well, I find I must tell you
at last. He is to be married next Sunday at the Louvre, with the King's
leave, to Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle de--Mademoiselle--guess, pray guess
her name; he is to be married to Mademoiselle, the great Mademoiselle;
Mademoiselle, daughter of the late Monsieur; Mademoiselle, granddaughter of
Henry IV; Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de
Montpensier, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle, the King's
cousin-german--Mademoiselle, destined to the throne--Mademoiselle, the only
match in France that was worthy of Monsieur.
What glorious matter for talk! If you should burst forth like a
bedlamite, say we have told you a lie, that it is false, that we are
making a jest of you, and that a pretty jest it is, without wit or
invention; in short, if you abuse us, we shall think you are quite in
the right; for we have done just the same things ourselves. Farewell,
you will find by the letters you receive this post whether we tell you
truth or not.
II
AN IMPOSING FUNERAL DESCRIBED[31]
I must return to narration, it is a folly I can never resist. Prepare,
therefore, for a description. I was yesterday at a service performed
in honor of the Chancellor Segnier at the Oratory. Painting,
sculpture, music, rhetoric--in a word, the four liberal arts--were at
the expense of it. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the decorations;
they were finely imagined, and designed by Le Brun. The mausoleum
reached to the top of the dome, adorned with a thousand lamps, and a
variety of figures characteristic of him in whose honor it was
erected. Beneath were four figures of Death, bearing the marks of his
several dignities, as having taken away his honors with his life. One
of them held his helmet, another his ducal coronet, another the
ensigns of his order, another his chancellor's mace. The four sister
arts, painting, music, eloquence and sculpture, were represented in
deep distress, bewailing the loss of their protector. The first
representation was supported by the four virtues, fortitude,
temperance, justice, and religion. Above these, four angels, or genii,
received the soul of the deceased, and seemed preening their purple
wings to bear their precious charge to heaven. The mausoleum was
adorned with a variety of little seraphs who supported an illuminated
shrine, which was fixt to the top of the cupola. Nothing so
magnificent or so well imagined was ever seen; it is Le Brun's
masterpiece. The whole church was adorned with pictures, devices, and
emblems, which all bore some relation to the life, or office of the
chancellor; and some of his noblest actions were represented in
painting. Madame de Verneuil offered to purchase all the decoration at
a great price; but it was unanimously resolved by those who had
contributed to it to adorn a gallery with it, and to consecrate it as
an everlasting monument of their gratitude and magnificence. The
assembly was grand and numerous, but without confusion. I sat next to
Monsieur de Tulle, Madame Colbert and the Duke of Monmouth, who is as
handsome as when we saw him at the _palais royal_. (Let me tell you in
a parenthesis that he is going to the army to join the King.) A young
father of the Oratory came to speak the funeral oration. I desired
Monsieur de Tulle to bid him come down, and to mount the pulpit in his
place; since nothing could sustain the beauty of the spectacle, and
the excellence of the music but the force of his eloquence.
[Footnote 31: From a letter to her daughter, dated Paris, May 6,
1672.]
My child, this young man trembled when he began, and we all trembled
for him. Our ears were at first struck with a provincial accent; he is
of Marseilles, and called Lené. But as he recovered from his
confusion, he became so brilliant; established himself so well, gave
so just a measure of praise to the deceased; touched with so much
address and delicacy all the passages in his life where delicacy was
required! placed in so true a light all that was most worthy of
admiration; employed all the charms of expression, all the masterly
strokes of eloquence with so much propriety and so much grace that
every one present, without exception, burst into applause, charmed
with so perfect, so finished a performance. He is twenty-eight years
of age, the intimate friend of M. de Tulle, who accompanied him when
he left the assembly. We were for naming him the Chevalier Mascaron,
and I think he will even surpass his friend. As for the music, it was
fine beyond all description. Baptiste exerted himself to the utmost,
and was assisted by all the King's musicians. There was an addition
made to that fine "Miserere," and there was a "Libera" which filled
the eyes of the whole assembly with tears; I do not think the music in
heaven could exceed it. There were several prelates present. I desired
Guitaut to look for the good Bishop of Marseilles, but we could not
see him. I whispered him that if it had been the funeral oration of
any person living to whom he might have made his court by it he would
not have failed to have been there. This little pleasantry made us
laugh, in spite of the solemnity of the ceremony. My dear child, what
a strange letter is this! I fancy I have almost lost my senses! What
is this long account to you? To tell the truth, I have satisfied my
love of description.
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
Born in France in 1668, died in 1747; studied philosophy and
law in Paris; wrote many novels and plays, some of them
borrowed from Spanish originals; published his chief work,
"Gil Blas," in 1715-35.
I
IN THE SERVICE OF DR. SANGRADO[32]
I determined to throw myself in the way of Sigñor Arias de Londona,
and to look out for a new berth in his register; but as I was on my
way to No Thoroughfare, who should come across me but Doctor Sangrado,
whom I had not seen since the day of my master's death. I took the
liberty of touching my hat. He kenned me in a twinkling, tho I had
changed my dress; and with as much warmth as his temperament would
allow him, "Heyday!" said he, "the very lad I wanted to see; you have
never been out of my thought. I have occasion for a clever fellow
about me, and pitched upon you as the very thing, if you can read and
write." "Sir," replied I, "if that is all you require, I am your man."
"In that case," rejoined he, "we need look no further. Come home with
me: it will be all comfort; I shall behave to you like a brother. You
will have no wages, but everything will be found you. You shall eat
and drink according to the true faith, and be taught to cure all
diseases. In a word, you shall rather be my young Sangrado than my
footman."
[Footnote 32: From "Gil Blas," which is perhaps as well known in
English as in French, innumerable translations having been made. The
best known is the one by Tobias Smollett, which has survived in favor
to the present time. A translation by P. Proctor appeared in 1774, one
by Martin Smart in 1807, and one by Benjamin H. Malkin in 1809.]
I closed in with the doctor's proposal, in the hope of becoming an
Esculapius under so inspired a master. He carried me home on the spur
of the occasion, to install me in my honorable employment; which
honorable employment consisted in writing down the name and residence
of the patients who sent for him in his absence. There had indeed been
a register for this purpose, kept by an old domestic; but she had not
the gift of spelling accurately, and wrote a most perplexing hand.
This account I was to keep. It might truly be called a bill of
mortality; for my members all went from bad to worse during the short
time they continued in this system. I was a sort of bookkeeper for the
other world, to take places in the stage, and to see that the first
come were the first served. My pen was always in my hand, for Doctor
Sangrado had more practise than any physician of his time in
Valladolid. He had got into reputation with the public by a certain
professional slang, humored by a medical face, and some extraordinary
cases more honored by implicit faith than scrupulous investigation.
He was in no want of patients, nor consequently of property. He did
not keep the best house in the world: we lived with some little
attention to economy. The usual bill of fare consisted of peas,
beans, boiled apples or cheese. He considered this food as best suited
to the human stomach; that is to say, as most amenable to the
grinders, whence it was to encounter the process of digestion.
Nevertheless, easy as was their passage, he was not for stopping the
way with too much of them; and to be sure, he was in the right. But
tho he cautioned the maid and me against repletion in respect of
solids, it was made up by free permission to drink as much water as we
liked. Far from prescribing us any limits in that direction, he would
tell us sometimes: "Drink, my children: health consists in the
pliability and moisture of the parts. Drink water by pailfuls: it is a
universal dissolvent; water liquefies all the salts. Is the course of
the blood a little sluggish? this grand principle sets it forward: too
rapid? its career is checked." Our doctor was so orthodox on this head
that the advanced in years, he drank nothing himself but water. He
defined old age to be a natural consumption which dries us up and
wastes us away: on this principle he deplored the ignorance of those
who call wine "old men's milk." He maintained that wine wears them out
and corrodes them; and pleaded with all the force of his eloquence
against that liquor, fatal in common both to the young and old--that
friend with a serpent in its bosom--that pleasure with a dagger under
its girdle.
In spite of these fine arguments, at the end of a week a looseness
ensued, with some twinges, which I was blasphemous enough to saddle on
the universal dissolvent and the new-fangled diet. I stated my
symptoms to my master, in the hope that he would relax the rigor of
his regimen and qualify my meals with a little wine; but his hostility
to that liquor was inflexible. "If you have not philosophy enough,"
said he, "for pure water, there are innocent infusions to strengthen
the stomach against the nausea of aqueous quaffings. Sage, for
example, has a very pretty flavor; and if you wish to heighten it into
a debauch, it is only mixing rosemary, wild poppy, and other simples
with it--but no compounds."