ey would exhaust it: we ourselves have not the means to do
it without ruin, or, which is more inconvenient and injurious, without
ruining the people. The condition of my loss would be scarcely worse.
As to the rest, you there lose all; and even your friends will be more
ready to accuse your want of vigilance and your improvidence, and your
ignorance of and indifference to your own business, than to pity you.
That so many garrisoned houses have been undone whereas this of mine
remains, makes me apt to believe that they were only lost by being
guarded; this gives an enemy both an invitation and colour of reason; all
defence shows a face of war. Let who will come to me in God's name; but
I shall not invite them; 'tis the retirement I have chosen for my repose
from war. I endeavour to withdraw this corner from the public tempest,
as I also do another corner in my soul. Our war may put on what forms it
will, multiply and diversify itself into new parties; for my part, I stir
not. Amongst so many garrisoned houses, myself alone amongst those of my
rank, so far as I know, in France, have trusted purely to Heaven for the
protection of mine, and have never removed plate, deeds, or hangings.
I will neither fear nor save myself by halves. If a full acknowledgment
acquires the Divine favour, it will stay with me to the end: if not, I
have still continued long enough to render my continuance remarkable and
fit to be recorded. How? Why, there are thirty years that I have thus
lived.

CHAPTER XVI

OF GLORY

There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and
signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the
substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it.
God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection,
cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be
augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His
exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him,
forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name,
which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to
God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from
reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being
indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having
continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our
endeavour