those whose
affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A
prince may be the byword of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing of
it. I am not surprized; to speak the truth is useful to whom it is
spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes them
hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more
than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not to
benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice.

This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher
classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always
an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual
illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us
in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on
this universal deceit; few friendships would last if every man knew
what his friend said of him behind his back, tho he then spoke in
sincerity and without passion.

Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself
and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth; he avoids
telling it to others; and all these tendencies, so far removed from
justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE

Born in Paris in 1626, died in 1696; married in 1644 to the
Marquis de Sevigne, who was killed in a duel in 1651; lived
late in life in Brittany; wrote to her married daughter,
Madame de Grigman, the famous letters from which has
proceeded her fame.

I

GREAT NEWS FROM PARIS[30]

I am going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most
surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most
magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most
singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most
unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the
most public, the most private till to-day, the most brilliant, the
most inevitable; in short, a thing of which there is but one example
in past ages, and that not an exact one either; a thing that we can
not believe at Paris; how, then, will it gain credence at Lyons? a
thing which makes everybody cry, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" a thing
which causes the greatest joy to Madame de Rohan and Madame de
Hauterive; a thing, in fine, which is to happen on Sunday next, when
those who are present will doubt the evidence of their senses; a thing