1 "Il se fault bien garder de faire tant de services à son maistre, qu'on l'empesche d'en trouver la juste recompense."—Memoires.
2 "Beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse: ubi multum antivenere, pro gratiâ odium redditur."
3 "Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere, non vult esse cui reddat."
4 "Qui si non putat satisfacere, amicus esse nullo modo potest."
Heroes.—Marshal de Saxe is accustomed to get the credit of a very clever saying, "that no man seems a hero to his own valet de chambre." Now, not to speak of the scriptural apothegm, "that a prophet has no honor in his own country," the following passage from Montaigne will be found to contain precisely the Marshal's idea.
"Tel a esté miraculeux au monde, auquel sa femme et son valet n'ont rien veu seulement de remarquable. Peu d'hommes ont esté admirez par leurs domestiques: nul n'a esté prophète, non seulement en sa maison, mais en son pais, diet l'expérience des histoires."—Essais, vol. v, p. 198.
"Such an one has seemed miraculous to the world, in whom his wife and his valet could not even perceive any thing remarkable. Few men have ever been admired by their own servants; none was ever a prophet in his own country, still less in his own household."