(19.) Sylvanus[274] has with his money bought rank and another name; he is lord of the same manor where his forefathers had been paying the taille;[275] formerly he was not good enough to be Cleobulusʼ page, but now he is his son-in-law?
(20.) Dorus[276] is carried in a litter along the Appian Way;[277] his freedmen and slaves run before him to clear the way and to turn aside the people; he wants nothing but Lictors;[278] he enters Rome with quite a retinue, a triumphant foil to the meanness and poverty of his father Sanga.
(21.) No one makes a better use of his fortune than Periander;[279] it gives him a certain rank, influence, and authority; people no longer ask him to be their friend, but they implore his protection. In the beginning he spoke of himself as “such a man as I am,” but soon he says “a man of my rank;” for he pretends to be one of these men, and there are none who borrow money of him, or eat his dinners, which are exquisite, who dare dispute it. His residence is splendid; the outside is Doric, and there is no gate but a portico. Is it a private house or a temple? People are at a loss to know which. He is lord paramount of the entire precincts; every one envies him, and would rejoice at his downfall; his wifeʼs pearl necklace has made all the ladies of the neighbourhood her enemies. Everything in him is of a piece, and nothing yet belies that grandeur he has acquired, for which he has paid and does not owe anything. But why did his old and feeble father not die twenty years ago before Perianderʼs name was ever mentioned? How can any man ever endure those odious invitations to a funeral[280] which always reveal the real origin of the deceased, and often put the widows or the heirs to the blush? How shall he hide them from the eyes of the envious, malicious, keen-sighted town, and offend a thousand people who will insist on taking their due places at all funerals? Besides, what would you have him do? Shall he style his father Noble homme and perhaps Honorable homme, whilst he himself is dubbed Messire?[281]
(22.) How many men are like trees, already strong and full grown, which are transplanted into some gardens, to the astonishment of those people who behold them in these fine spots, where they never saw them grow, and who neither know their beginning nor their progress!
(23.) If some dead were to rise again and saw who bore their illustrious names, and that their ancient lands, their castles, and their venerable seats were owned by the very men whose fathers had perhaps been their tenants, what would they think of our age?
(24.) Nothing makes us better understand what trifling things Providence thinks He bestows on men in granting them wealth, money, dignities, and other advantages, than the manner in which they are distributed and the kind of men who have the largest share.
(25.) If you were to enter a kitchen, where all that art and method can do is employed to gratify your palate, and make you eat more than you want; if you see how the viands are prepared which will be served up at the feast; if you observe how they are manipulated, and the various modifications they undergo before they become first-rate dishes, and are brought to that neatness and elegance which charm your eyes, puzzle your choice, and make you decide to taste them all; and then saw the ingredients of this feast anywhere else than on a well-spread table, how offended and disgusted you would be! If you were to go behind the scenes, and count the weights, the wheels, the ropes in “flights” and in the machinery; if you were to consider how many men are employed in executing these movements, and how they ply their arms and strain their nerves, you would ask if these are the prime motors and mainsprings of so handsome and natural a spectacle, which seems so full of life and so intuitive, and you would be greatly astonished at such efforts and such energy. In like manner inquire not too narrowly into the origin of the fortune of any farmer of the revenue.
(26.) This youth,[282] so ruddy, so florid, and so redolent of health, is lord of an abbey and of ten other benefices; they bring him in altogether one hundred and twenty thousand[283] livres a year, which are paid him in golden coin.[284] Elsewhere there are a hundred and twenty indigent families who have no fire to warm themselves during winter, no clothes to cover themselves, and who are often wanting bread; they are in a wretched and piteous state of poverty. What an inequality? And does this not clearly prove that there must be a future state?
(27.) Chrysippus,[285] an upstart, and the first nobleman of his lineage, thirty years ago limited his aims to two thousand livres a year; this was the height of his desires and the summit of his ambition; at least he said so, as many still remember. Some time after, I do not know by what means, he was able to give to one of his daughters as her dowry as much money as he thought formerly an ample competency for his whole lifetime. A like sum is put away for each of his other children, and he has a good many of them; and this is only an advance of their share in his estate, for a good deal of wealth may be expected at his death. He is still alive, and though advanced in years, employs the few days which still remain to him in labouring to become richer.
(28.) Let Ergastus alone, and he will demand a duty from all who drink some water from the river or who walk on terra firma; he knows how to convert reeds, rushes, and nettles into gold;[286] he listens to all projects, and proposes everything he hears. The prince gives nothing to any one but at Ergastusʼ expense, and bestows no favours but what are his due, for his desire to have and to possess is never appeased. He would even deal in arts and sciences, and farm out harmony; were his advice to be taken, the people, for the pleasure of seeing him wealthy, and with a pack of hounds and a stable, would forget the music of Orpheus and be satisfied with his.