it was his self-conceit which prevented him from knowing
it. He was not wanting in learning, but the knowledge which he believed
himself to possess destroyed the learning which he had in reality. He
delighted in speaking to those who did not know how to answer him,
whether because they were amazed at his arguments, or because they
pretended to be so; but he called pedants, and avoided all persons, who
by true reasoning pulled down the weak scaffolding of his arguments.
Seven years ago I happened to meet him at Luxemburg, and he spoke to me
with just contempt of a man who had exchanged immense sums of money, and
a great deal of debasing meanness against some miserable parchments, and
he added,--

"I despise men who purchase nobility."

"Your majesty is right, but what are we to think of those who sell it?"

After that question he turned his back upon me, and hence forth he
thought me unworthy of being spoken to.

The great passion of that king was to see those who listened to him
laugh, whether with sincerity or with affectation, when he related
something; he could narrate well and amplify in a very amusing manner all
the particulars of an anecdote; but he called anyone who did not laugh at
his jests a fool, and that was always the person who understood him best.
He gave the preference to the opinion of Brambilla, who encouraged his
suicide, over that of the physicians who were directing him according to
reason. Nevertheless, no one ever denied his claim to great courage; but
he had no idea whatever of the art of government, for he had not the
slightest knowledge of the human heart, and he could neither dissemble
nor keep a secret; he had so little control over his own countenance that
he could not even conceal the pleasure he felt in punishing, and when he
saw anyone whose features did not please him, he could not help making a
wry face which disfigured him greatly.

Joseph II. sank under a truly cruel disease, which left him until the
last moment the faculty of arguing upon everything, at the same time that
he knew his death to be certain. This prince must have felt the misery of
repenting everything he had done and of seeing the impossibility of
undoing it, partly because it was irreparable, partly because if he had
undone through reason what he had done through senselessness, he would
have thought himself dishonoured, for he must have clung to the last to
the belief of the infallibility attached to his high birth