UPON POLITICAL DIPLOMACY.
On one occasion I expressed my surprise to our Blessed Father that his Serene Highness Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, who was one of the most excellent Princes and foremost politicians of his age, should never have employed him in his affairs, especially in those which regarded France, where they did not prosper.
As may be supposed, I explained the reason of my surprise, insisting that his gentleness, patience, skill, and probity were certain to bring about the desired result.
He listened in silence, and then answered with a seriousness and earnestness which put me to shame, "You say too much, you exaggerate: you imagine that others esteem me as you do, you who are always looking at me through a magnifying glass. However, let us put that aside. As regards our Prince, my feeling is very different from yours, for in this very matter I consider that he shows the excellence of his judgment.
"I will tell you why I speak and think this. In the first place, I have not all that skill and prudence in the management of affairs with which you credit me. Is it likely I should have? The mere words, human prudence, business, politics, terrify me. That is not all. To speak frankly, I know nothing of the art of lying, dissimulating, or pretence, which latter is the chief instrument and the mainspring of political manoeuvring; the art of arts in all matters of human prudence and of civil administration.
"Not for all the provinces of Savoy, of France, nay, not for the whole empire, would I connive at deceit. I deal with others frankly, in good faith, and very simply; the words of my lips are the outcome of the thoughts of my heart. I cannot carry two faces under one hood; I hate duplicity with a mortal hatred, knowing that God holds the deceitful man in abomination. There are very few who, knowing me, do not at least discern this much of my character. They therefore judge very wisely that I am by no means fit for an office in which you have to speak peace to your neighbour whilst you are plotting mischief against him in your heart. Moreover, I have always followed, as a heavenly, supreme, and divine maxim, those great words of the Apostle: No man being a soldier to God entangleth himself with secular business that he may please Him to whom he hath engaged himself."[1]
[Footnote 1: Tim. ii, 4.]