two friends to-day, and be obliged tomorrow to make your option between
them as enemies; observe, therefore, such a degree of reserve with your
friends as not to put yourself in their power, if they should become your
enemies; and such a degree of moderation with your enemies, as not to
make it impossible for them to become your friends.

Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good-breeding;
were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation.
Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other,
if manners did not interpose; but ambition and avarice, the two
prevailing passions at courts, found dissimulation more effectual than
violence; and dissimulation introduced that habit of politeness, which
distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman. In the former case
the strongest body would prevail; in the latter, the strongest mind.

A man of parts and efficiency need not flatter everybody at court; but he
must take great care to offend nobody personally; it being in the power
of every man to hurt him, who cannot serve him. Homer supposes a chain
let down from Jupiter to the earth, to connect him with mortals. There
is, at all courts, a chain 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 bett