m that character
advantageously, you have three objects particularly to attend to: your
character as a man of morality, truth, and honor; your knowledge in the
objects of your destination, as a man of business; and your engaging and
insinuating address, air and manners, as a courtier; the sure and only
steps to favor.

Merit at courts, without favor, will do little or nothing; favor, without
merit, will do a good deal; but favor and merit together will do
everything. Favor at courts depends upon so many, such trifling, such
unexpected, and unforeseen events, that a good courtier must attend to
every circumstance, however little, that either does, or can happen; he
must have no absences, no DISTRACTIONS; he must not say, "I did not mind
it; who would have thought it?" He ought both to have minded, and to have
thought it. A chamber-maid has sometimes caused revolutions in courts
which have produced others in kingdoms. Were I to make my way to favor in
a court, I would neither willfully, nor by negligence, give a dog or a
cat there reason to dislike me. Two 'pies grieches', well instructed, you
know, made the fortune of De Luines with Lewis XIII. Every step a man
makes at court requires as much attention and circumspection, as those
which were made formerly between hot plowshares, in the Ordeal, or fiery
trials; which, in those times of ignorance and superstition, were looked
upon as demonstrations of innocence or guilt. Direct your principal
battery, at Hanover, at the D of N 's: there are many very weak places in
that citadel; where, with a very little skill, you cannot fail making a
great impression. Ask for his orders in everything you do; talk Austrian
and Anti-gallican to him; and, as soon as you are upon a foot of talking
easily to him, tell him 'en badinant', that his skill and success in
thirty or forty elections in England leave you no reason to doubt of his
carrying his election for Frankfort; and that you look upon the Archduke
as his Member for the Empire. In his hours of festivity and compotation,
drop that he puts you in mind of what Sir William Temple says of the
Pensionary De Witt,--who at that time governed half Europe,--that he
appeared at balls, assemblies, and public places, as if he had nothing
else to do or to think of. When he talks to you upon foreign affairs,
which he will often do, say that you really cannot presume to give any
opinion of your own upon those matters, looking upon yourself at prese