Part 13

(18.) Courts cannot exist without a class of courtiers who can flatter, are complaisant, insinuating, devoted to the ladies, whose pleasures they direct, whose weaknesses they study, and whose passions they flatter; they whisper some naughty words to them, speak of their husbands and lovers in a proper manner, conjecture when they are sad, ill, or expect a baby; they head the fashions, refine on luxury and extravagance, and teach the fair to spend in a short time large sums on clothes, furniture, and carriages; they wear nothing themselves but what shows good taste and riches, and will not live in an old palace till it be repaired and embellished; they eat delicately and thoughtfully; there is no pleasure they have not tried and of which they cannot tell you something; they owe their position to themselves, and they keep it with the same ability they made it. Disdainful and proud, they no longer accost their former equals, and scarcely bow to them; they speak when every one else is silent; enter, and at inconvenient hours thrust themselves into places where men of the highest rank dare not intrude; and when such men, after long services, their bodies covered with wounds, filling great posts or occupying high official positions, do not look so confident, and seem embarrassed. Princes listen to what these courtiers have to say, who share all their pleasures and entertainments, and never stir out of the Louvre or the Castle,[391] where they behave themselves as if quite at home and in their own house; they seem to be in a thousand different places at one and the same time; their countenances are sure always to attract the notice of any novice at court; they embrace and are embraced, they laugh, talk loud, are funny, tell stories, and are of an easy disposition; they are agreeable, rich, lend money, but, after all, are of no importance.[392]

(19.) Would any person not think that to Cimon and Clitandre alone are intrusted all the details of the State, and that they alone are answerable for them? The one manages at least everything concerning agriculture and land, and the other is at the head of the navy. Whoever will give a sketch of them must express bustle, restlessness, curiosity, activity, and paint Hurry itself. We never see them sitting, standing, or stopping; no one has ever seen them walk; for they are always running, and they speak whilst running, and do not wait for an answer; they never come from any place, or go anywhere, but are always passing to and fro. Stop them not in their hurried course, for you would break their machinery; do not ask them any questions, or, if you do, give them at least time to breathe and to remember that they have nothing to do, can stay with you long, and follow you wherever you are pleased to lead them. They do not, like Jupiterʼs satellites,[393] crowd round and encompass their prince, but precede him and give notice of his coming: they rush with impetuosity through the crowd of courtiers, and all who stand in their way are in danger. Their profession is to be seen again and again, and they never go to bed without having acquitted themselves of such an important duty, so beneficial to the commonwealth. They know, besides, all the circumstances of every petty accident, and are acquainted with anything at court people wish to ignore; they possess all the qualifications necessary for a small post. Nevertheless they are eager and watchful about anything they think will suit them as well as slightly enterprising, thoughtless, and precipitate. In a word, they both carry their heads very high, and are harnessed to the chariot of Fortune, but are never likely to sit in it.

(20.) A courtier who has not a pretty name ought to hide it under a better;[394] but if it is one that he dares own,[395] he should then insinuate that his name is the most illustrious of all names, and his house the most ancient of all others; he ought to be descended from the princes of Lorraine, the Rohans, the Châtillons, the Montmorencys,[396] and, if possible, from princes of the blood; he ought to talk of nothing but dukes, cardinals, and ministers; to introduce his paternal and maternal ancestors in all conversations, as well as the _Oriflamme_[397] and the Crusades; to have his apartments adorned with genealogical trees, escutcheons with sixteen quarters, and portraits of his ancestors and of the relatives of his ancestors; to value himself on his having an old castle with turrets, battlements, and portcullises; to be always speaking of his race, his branch, his name, and his arms; to say of a man that he is not a man of rank, of a woman that she is not of noble extraction;[398] or to ask whether Hyacinthus is a nobleman when they tell him he has drawn a great prize in the lottery.[399] If some persons laugh at such absurd remarks, he lets them laugh on; if others make erroneous comments, they are welcome; he will always assert that he takes his place after the royal family, and, by constantly repeating it, he will finally be believed.

(21.) It shows a simple mind to acknowledge at court the smallest alloy of common blood, and not to set up for a nobleman.

(22.) At court people go to bed and rise only with a view to self; it is what they revolve in their own minds morning and evening, night and day; it is for this they think, speak, are silent or act; it is with this disposition that they converse with some and neglect others, that they ascend or descend; by this rule they measure all their assiduity, complaisance, esteem, indifference, or contempt. Whatever progress any of them seems to make towards moderation and wisdom, they are carried away by the first motive of ambition along with the most covetous, the most violent in their desires, and the most ambitious. Can they stand still when everything is in motion, when everything is stirring, and forbear running whither every one runs? Such people even think they only owe their success in life to themselves; and a man who has not made it at court is supposed not to have deserved it; and this judgment is without appeal. However, is it advisable for a man to leave the court without having obtained any advantage by his stay, or should he remain there without favour or reward? This question is so intricate, so delicate, and so difficult to decide, that a very large number of courtiers have grown old without coming to any affirmative or negative conclusion, and died, at last, without having arrived at any final resolution.

(23.) There is nothing at court so worthless and so contemptible as a man who cannot assist us in the least to better our position; I am amazed such a person dares appear there.

(24.) A man who sees himself raised far above his contemporaries, whose rank was formerly the same as his own, and who made their first appearance at court at the same time as he did, fancies it is a sure proof of his superior merit, and thinks himself better than those other people who could not keep up with him; but he forgets what he thought of himself before he became a favourite, and what he thought of those who had outstripped him.

(25.) It proves a good deal for a friend, after he has become a great favourite at court, still to keep up an acquaintance with us.

(26.) If a man who is in favour dares to take advantage of it before it is all over; if he makes use of a propitious gale to get on; if he keeps his eye on any vacancies, posts, or abbeys, asks for them, obtains them, and is stocked with pensions, grants, and reversions,[400] people will blame him for being covetous and ambitious, and will say that everything tempts him and is secured by him, his friends and his creatures; and that through the numberless and various favours bestowed on him, he, in his own person, has monopolised several fortunes. But what should he have done? I judge not so much by what people say, as by what they would have done themselves under similar circumstances, and that is precisely what he has done.

We blame those persons who make use of their opportunities for bettering their positions, because we are in a very inferior situation, and, therefore, despair of being ever in such circumstances that will expose us to a similar reproach. But if we were likely to succeed them, we should begin to think they were not so much in the wrong as we imagined, and would be more cautious in censuring them, for fear of condemning ourselves beforehand.

(27.) We should not exaggerate things, nor blame the court for evils which do not exist there. Courtiers never endeavour to harm real merit, but they leave it sometimes without reward; they do not always despise it when they have once discerned it, but they forget all about it; for a court is a place where people most perfectly understand doing nothing, or very little, for those whom they greatly esteem.

(28.) It would be very wonderful indeed, if among all the instruments I employ for building up my fortune, some of them were not to miscarry. A friend of mine who promised to speak for me does not say a single word; another speaks without any spirit; a third speaks by accident against my interests, though it was not his intention to do so. One lacks the will, another sagacity and prudence; and none of them would be sufficiently delighted in seeing me happy, and do everything in their power for making me so. Every one remembers well enough what pains he took in establishing his own position, and what assistance he got in clearing his way to obtain it. We should not be averse to acknowledge the services which certain people have rendered us, by rendering to others some service on similar occasions, if our chief and only care were not to think of ourselves when we have made our fortune.

(29.) Courtiers never employ whatever intelligence, skill, or perspicacity they may possess to find out means of obliging those of their friends who implore their assistance, but they only invent evasive answers, plausible excuses, or what they call impossibilities for moving in the matter; and then they think they have satisfied all the duties which friendship and gratitude require.

No courtier cares to take the initiative in anything, but he will offer to second him who does, because, judging of others by himself, he thinks that no one will make a beginning, and that therefore he shall not be obliged to second any one. This is a gentle and polite way of refusing to employ his influence, good offices, and mediation in favour of those who stand in need of them.

(30.) How many men almost stifle you with their demonstrations of friendship, and pretend to love and esteem you in private, who are embarrassed when they meet you in public, and at the kingʼs levée, or at mass at Versailles, look another way, and do all they can to avoid you. There are few courtiers who have sufficient greatness of soul or confidence in themselves to dare to honour in public a man of merit but who does not occupy a grand post.

(31.) I see a man surrounded and followed by a crowd, but he is in office. I see another to whom every one says a few words, but he is a court favourite; a third is embraced and caressed even by persons of high rank, but he is wealthy; a fourth is stared at by all, and pointed at, but he is learned and eloquent. I perceive one whom nobody omits bowing to, but he is a bad man. I should like to see a man courted who is merely good and nothing else.

(32.) When a man is appointed to a new post he is inundated with praises, which flood the courtyards, the chapel, overflow the grand staircase, the vestibules, the galleries, and all the rooms of the palace;[401] he has quite enough of them, and can no longer bear it. There are not two different opinions about him; those of envy and jealousy are the same as those of adulation; every one is carried away by the raging torrent which forces a person to say what he thinks of such a man, or what he does not think of him, and often to commend a man of whom he has no knowledge. If such a man has any intelligence, merit, or valour, he becomes in one moment a genius of the first order, a hero, a demi-god; he is so extravagantly flattered in all the portraits painted of him that he appears disagreeably ugly when compared with any of them; it is impossible for him ever to reach the point to which servility and adulation would have him rise; he blushes at his own reputation. But let him not be so firmly established in the post in which he has been placed as people thought he was, and the world will without difficulty entertain another opinion. If his downfall be complete, then the very men who were instrumental in raising him so high by their applause and praise are quite ready to overwhelm him with the greatest contempt; I mean, there are none who will despise him more, blame him with greater acrimony, or deny him with more contumely than those very men who were most impassioned in speaking well of him.[402]

(33.) It may be justly said that it is easier to get appointed to an eminent and difficult post than to keep it.

(34.) We see men fallen from a high estate for those very faults for which they were appointed to it.

(35.) At court there are two ways of dismissing or discharging servants and dependants; to be angry with them, or to make them so angry with us that they leave us of their own accord.

(36.) Courtiers speak well of a man for two reasons: firstly, that he may know they have commended him; and secondly, that he may say the same of them.

(37.) It is as dangerous at court to make any advances as it is embarrassing not to make them.

(38.) There are some people who, if they do not know the name or the face of a man, make this a pretence for laughing at him. They ask who that man is; it is not Rousseau, Fabry, or La Couture,[403] for then they would know him.

(39.) I am told so many bad things of this man, and see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has some merit which is so vexatious that it eclipses the merit of others.

(40.) You are an honest man,[404] and do not make it your business either to please or displease the favourites. You are merely attached to your master and to your duty; you are a lost man.

(41.) None are impudent by choice; but they are so constitutionally, and though it is quite wrong, yet it is natural; a man who is not born so is modest and cannot easily pass from one extreme to another. It would be useless to advise such a man to be impudent in order to be successful; a bad imitation will not do him any good, and would ensure his failure. Without real and ingenious effrontery there is not doing anything at court.

(42.) We seek, we hurry, we intrigue, we worry ourselves, we ask and are refused; we ask again and get what we ask for; but we pretend we obtained it without ever having asked for it, or so much as thought about it, and even when we had quite another thing in view. This is an obsolete style, a silly falsehood, which deceives nobody.

(43.) A man intrigues to obtain an eminent post, lays all his plans beforehand, takes all the right measures, and is on the point of being as successful as he wishes; some people are to initiate the business in hand, others are to second it; the bait is already laid, and the mine ready to be sprung; and then the candidate absents himself from the court. Who would dare suspect that Artemon ever aimed at so fine a post when he is ordered to leave his seat or his government to fill it?[405] Such an artifice and such a policy has become so stale, and the courtiers have so often employed it, that if I would impose upon the world and mask my ambition, I should always be about the prince to receive from his own hand that favour which I had solicited so passionately.

(44.) Men do not like us to pry into their prospects of bettering their position, or to find out what post they are anxious to occupy, because, if they are not successful, they fancy their failure brings some discredit upon them; and if they succeed, they persuade themselves it redounds more to their credit that the giver thought them worthy of it than that they thought themselves worthy of it, and, therefore, intrigued and plotted; they appear decked in their stateliness as well as in their modesty.[406]

Which is the greater shame, to be refused the post which we deserve, or to be put into one we do not deserve?

Difficult as it is to obtain a place at court, it is yet harder and more difficult to be worthy of filling one.

A man had better be asked by what means he obtained a certain post than why he did not obtain it.

People become candidates for any municipal office, or try to get a seat in the French Academy,[407] but formerly they endeavoured to obtain a consulship. Why should a man not labour hard during the early years of his life to render himself fit for eminent posts, and then ask openly and fearlessly, without mystery and without any intriguing, to serve his fatherland, his prince, and the commonwealth?

(45.) I never yet have seen a courtier whom a prince has appointed governor of a wealthy province, given a first-rate place, or a large pension, who does not protest, either through vanity, or to show himself disinterested, that he is less pleased with the gift than with the manner in which it was given. What is certain and cannot be doubted is that he says so.

To give awkwardly denotes the churl; the most difficult and unpleasant part is to give; then, why not add a smile?

There are, however, some men who refuse with more politeness to grant you what you ask than others know how to give;[408] and some of whom it has been said that you have to ask them so long, and they give so coldly and impose such disagreeable conditions on whatever favour you have to tear from them, that their greatest favour would be to excuse us from receiving any.[409]

(46.) There are some men at court so covetous that they catch hold of any rank or condition to reap its benefits; governments of provinces, offices, benefices, nothing comes amiss to them; they are so situated that, by virtue of their official position, they can accept any kind of favour; they are amphibious, live by the church and the sword, and one day or other will discover the secret of including the law also.[410] If you ask what those men do at court, you will be told that they receive and envy every one to whom anything is given.

(47.) A thousand people at court wear out their very existence by embracing, caressing, and congratulating all persons who have received favours, and die without having any bestowed on themselves.

(48.) Menophilus[411] borrows his manners from one profession and his dress from another; he goes masked all the year, though he does not conceal his countenance; he appears at court, in town, and elsewhere, always under a certain name and in the same disguise. He is found out and known by his face.

(49.) There is a highroad or a beaten road, as it is called, which leads to grand offices, and there is a cross or bye-way which is much the shortest.

(50.) We run to get a look at some wretched criminals, we line one side of the street, and we stand at the windows to observe the features and the bearing of a man who is doomed and knows he is going to die, impelled by a senseless, malignant, inhuman curiosity. If men were wise, they would avoid public executions, and then it would even be considered infamous to be present at such spectacles.[412] If you are of such an inquisitorial turn of mind, exercise your curiosity on a noble subject, and look on a happy man on the very day he has been appointed to a new post, and when he is congratulated on his nomination; read in his eyes, through his affected composure and feigned modesty, his delight and latent exultation; observe how quiet his heart beats and how serene his countenance looks now that he has obtained all he wished; how he thinks of nothing but his long life and health; how, at last, his joy bursts forth and can no longer be concealed; how he bends beneath the weight of his happiness, and how coolly and stiffly he behaves towards those who are no longer his equals; he vouchsafes them no answer, and seems not to see them; the embraces and demonstrations of friendship of men of high rank, whom he views now no more from a distance, finish his ruin; he becomes bewildered, dazed, and for a short time his brain is turned. You who would be happy and in your princeʼs favour, consider how many things you will have to avoid.[413]

(51.) When a man has once got into office, he neither makes use of his reason nor of his intelligence to regulate his behaviour and manners towards others, but shapes them according to his office and his position; this is the cause of his forgetfulness, pride, arrogance, harshness, and ingratitude.[414]

(52.) Theonas having been an _abbé_[415] for thirty years, grows weary of being so any longer. Others show less anxiety and impatience in being clad in purple than he displays in wearing a golden cross on his breast;[416] and because no great festival at court has ever made any alteration in his position,[417] he rails at the times, declares the state badly governed, and forebodes naught but ill for the future. Convinced in his heart that in courts merit is prejudicial to a man who wishes to better his position, he at last makes up his mind to renounce the prelacy; but some one hastens to inform him that he has been appointed to a bishopric, and full of joy and conceit at news so unexpected he says to a friend, “Youʼll see I shall not remain a bishop for ever; I shall be an archbishop yet.”

(53.) There must be knaves at court[418] about the great and the Ministers of State, even if those are animated with the best intentions; but to know when to employ them is a very difficult question, and requires a certain amount of shrewdness. There are times and seasons when others cannot fill their places; for honour, virtue, and conscience, though always worthy of our respect, are frequently useless, and therefore in certain emergencies an honest man[419] cannot be employed.

(54.) An ancient author, whose very words I shall take the liberty to quote,[420] for fear I should weaken the sense of them by my translation, says: “To forsake the common herd, nay, oneʼs very equals, to despise and vilify them; to get acquainted with rich men of rank; to join them in their private amusements, deceits, tricks, and bad business; to be brazen-faced, shameless, bankrupt in reputation; to endure the gibes and jokes of all men, and, in spite of all this, not to fear to go on, and that skilfully, has been the cause of many a manʼs fortune.”

(55.) The youth of a prince is the making of many courtiers.

(56.) Timantes,[421] still the same, and possessed of that very merit which at first got him reputation and rewards, has deteriorated in the opinion of the courtiers, who are weary of respecting him; they bow to him coldly, forbear smiling on him, no longer accost nor embrace him, nor take him into a corner to talk mysteriously about some trivial affair; they have nothing more to say to him. He receives a pension, or is honoured by being appointed to a new post; and his virtues, almost dead in their memories, revive whilst their thoughts are refreshed; now they treat him as they did at the beginning, and even better.