in which connects the prince or the minister with
the page of the back stairs, or the chamber-maid. The king's wife, or
mistress, has an influence over him; a lover has an influence over her;
the chambermaid, or the valet de chambre, has an influence over both, and
so ad infinitum. You must, therefore, not break a link of that chain, by
which you hope to climb up to the prince.

You must renounce courts if you will not connive at knaves, and tolerate
fools. Their number makes them considerable. You should as little quarrel
as connect yourself with either.

Whatever you say or do at court, you may depend upon it, will be known;
the business of most of those, who crowd levees and antichambers, being
to repeat all that they see or hear, and a great deal that they neither
see nor hear, according as they are inclined to the persons concerned, or
according to the wishes of those to whom they hope to make their court.
Great caution is therefore necessary; and if, to great caution, you can
join seeming frankness and openness, you will unite what Machiavel
reckons very difficult but very necessary to be united; 'volto sciolto e
pensieri stretti'.

Women are very apt to be mingled in court intrigues; but they deserve
attention better than confidence; to hold by them is a very precarious
tenure.

I am agreeably interrupted in these reflections by a letter which I have
this moment received from Baron Firmian. It contains your panegyric, and
with the strongest protestations imaginable that he does you only
justice. I received this favorable account of you with pleasure, and I
communicate it to you with as much. While you deserve praise, it is
reasonable you should know that you meet with it; and I make no doubt,
but that it will encourage you in persevering to deserve it. This is one
paragraph of the Baron's letter: Ses moeurs dans un age si tendre,
reglees selon toutes les loix d'une morale exacte et sensee; son
application (that is what I like) a tout ce qui s'appelle etude serieuse,
et Belles Lettres,--"Notwithstanding his great youth, his manners are
regulated by the most unexceptionable rules of sense and of morality. His
application THAT IS WHAT I LIKE to every kind of serious study, as well
as to polite literature, without even the least appearance of
ostentatious pedantry, render him worthy of your most tender affection;
and I have the honor of assuring you, that everyone cannot but be pleased
with the acquisition of his