(79.) To know how to speak to a king is perhaps the sole art of a prudent and pliant courtier. One word escapes him, which the prince hears, recollects, and sometimes lodges in his heart; there is no recalling it; all the care and skill that can be used to explain or soften it, serves only to impress it the more and to bite it in deeper. If the courtier has only spoken against himself, though this misfortune is very unusual, the remedy is at hand; he must take warning by his fault, and bear the punishment of his levity; but if another be the victim, he ought to feel dejected and contrite. Is there a better rule in such a dangerous conjuncture than to talk to our sovereign of others, of their persons, works, actions, manners, or conduct, at least with the same reserve, precaution, and care with which we talk of ourselves?
(80.) I would say that a man who tries to be witty must have a most wretched character, if it had not been said before.[443] Those persons who injure the reputation or position of others for the sake of a witticism deserve to be punished with ignominy; this has not been said before, and I dare say it.
(81.) There are a certain number of ready-made phrases which we store and use when we wish to congratulate one another. Though we often utter them without really feeling what we say, and are received without gratitude, yet we must not omit them, because, at least, they represent the very best thing in this world, namely, friendship; and since men cannot depend on one another in reality, they seem to have agreed to be satisfied with appearances.
(82.) With five or six terms of art, and nothing else, we set up for connoisseurs in music, painting, architecture, and gastronomy; we fancy we have more pleasure than others in hearing, seeing, or eating; we impose on our fellow-creatures and deceive ourselves.
(83.) At court there are always a certain number of people to whom a knowledge of the world, politeness, or fortune supply the want of merit;[444] they know how to enter and to leave a room; they are never embarrassed in their conversation, because they never engage in one; they please by their very taciturnity, and make themselves appear of importance by their prolonged silence, or by uttering, at most, a few monosyllables; they answer you by a glance, an intonation, a gesture, and a smile; their understanding, if I may venture on the expression, is only two inches deep, and if you fathom it, you will soon come to the bottom.
(84.) There are some men on whom favour lights as it were accidentally; they are the first it surprises and even alarms; they recollect themselves at last, and think they are worthy of their good fortune; and, as if stupidity and fortune were two things incompatible, or as if it were impossible to be lucky and foolish at one and the same time, they fancy they are intelligent, and venture, or I should rather say, are conceited enough, to speak on all occasions, on every possible subject, and without any regard for their audience. I might add that at last they become terrible, and disgust every one by their fatuity and nonsense. This is at least certain; they infallibly discredit those who assisted them in their promotion.[445]
(85.) What shall we call those who are only shrewd in the opinion of fools? I know this, that able men rank them with the people they impose upon.
A man must be very shrewd to make other people believe that he is not so sharp after all.
Shrewdness is neither too good nor too bad a quality, but is something between a virtue and a vice; there is scarcely any circumstance in which prudence cannot supply its place, and, perhaps, in which it ought not to do so.
Shrewdness is a near neighbour of rascality; there is but a step from the one to the other, and that a slippery one; falsehood only makes the difference, for add shrewdness to it, and the result is rascality.