[4] See the Vie privée du duc de Richelieu, nine volumes in 8vo. Why, at the moment that an assassin kills a man, does he not fall dead at his victim's feet? Why is there illness? And, if there is illness, why does not a Troistaillons die of the colic? Why does Henry IV reign twenty-one years and Lewis XV fifty-nine? Why is not the length of life in exact proportion to the degree of virtue in each man? These and other "infamous questions," English philosophers will say there is certainly no merit in posing; but there would be some merit in answering them otherwise than with insults and "cant."
[5] Note Nero after the murder of his mother, in Suetonius, and yet with what a fine lot of flattery was he surrounded.
[6] Cruelty is only a morbid kind of sympathy. Power is, after love, the first source of happiness, only because one believes oneself to be in a position to command sympathy.
[7] If you offer the spectator a picture of the sentiment of virtue side by side with the sentiment of love, you will find that you have represented a heart divided between two sentiments. In novels the only good of virtue is to be sacrificed; vide Julie d'Étanges.
[8] Vide Saint-Simon, fausse couche of the Duchesse de Bourgoyne; and Madame de Motteville, passim: That princess, who was surprised to find that other women had five fingers on their hands like herself; that Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Lewis XIII, who found it quite easy to understand why his favourites went to the scaffold just to please him. Note, in 1820, these fine gentlemen putting forward an electoral law that may bring back your Robespierres into France, etc., etc. And observe Naples in 1799. (I leave this note written in 1820. A list of the great nobles in 1778, with notes on their morals, compiled by General Laclos, seen at Naples in the library of the Marchese Berio—a very scandalous manuscript of more than three hundred pages.)
[9] The character of the young man of the privileged classes in 1820 is pretty correctly represented by the brave Bothwell of Old Mortality.
[10] See Memoirs of de Retz and the unpleasant minute he gave the coadjutor at the Parliament between two doors.
[11] Vol. 1819. Honeysuckle on the slopes.
[12] [A prudent man continually mistrusts himself. 'Tis the reason why the number of false lovers is great. The women whom men worship, make their servants, who have never been false in their life, sigh a long time. But the value of the prize that they give them in the end, can only be known to the heart that tastes it; the greater the cost, the more divine it is. The praises of love are not worth its pains.—Tr.]
[13] [I must have novelty, even if there were none left in the world.—Tr. ]