ince you further that I will neither
add to nor diminish from the plain truth, I shall set my name in the
front of the work.

False glory and false modesty are the two rocks on which men who have
written their own lives have generally split, but which Thuanus among the
moderns and Caesar among the ancients happily escaped. I doubt not you
will do me the justice to believe that I do not pretend to compare myself
with those great writers in any respect but sincerity,--a virtue in which
we are not only permitted, but commanded, to rival the greatest heroes.

I am descended from a family illustrious in France and ancient in Italy,
and born upon a day remarkable for the taking of a monstrous sturgeon in
a small river that runs through the country of Montmirail, in Brie, the
place of my nativity.

I am not so vain as to be proud of having it thought that I was ushered
into the world with a prodigy or a miracle, and I should never have
mentioned this trifling circumstance had it not been for some libels
since published by my enemies, wherein they affect to make the said
sturgeon a presage of the future commotions in this kingdom, and me the
chief author of them.

I beg leave to make a short reflection on the nature of the mind of man.
I believe there never was a more honest soul in the world than my
father's; I might say his temper was the very essence of virtue. For
though he saw I was too much inclined to duels and gallantry ever to make
a figure as an ecclesiastic, yet his great love for his eldest son--not
the view of the archbishopric of Paris, which was then in his
family--made him resolve to devote me to the service of the Church. For
he was so conscious of his reasons, that I could even swear he would have
protested from the very bottom of his heart that he had no other motive
than the apprehension of the dangers to which a contrary profession might
expose my soul. So true it is that nothing is so subject to delusion as
piety: all sorts of errors creep in and hide themselves under that veil;
it gives a sanction to all the turns of imagination, and the honesty of
the intention is not sufficient to guard against it. In a word, after
all I have told you, I turned priest, though it would have been long
enough first had it not been for the following accident.

The Duc de Retz, head of our family, broke at that time, by the King's
order, the marriage treaty concluded some years before between the Duc de
Mercoeur--[