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– DRAWN FROM LIFE – consciously striven hard to avoid exploiting to the detriment of anyone else or to inflate my rights beyond their rightful worth. In short I am happy to say that I have spent all my days virgin of lawsuits (even though they have not failed frequently to offer themselves to my service on many a just pretext if only I would listen) and virgin of actions against me. So I shall soon have spent a long life without serious harm given or received, and without being called anything worse than my name: a rare gift of Heaven. Our greatest commotions arise from laughable principles and causes. What ruin befell our last Duke of Burgundy because of an action against him for a cartload of sheep-skins. And was not the engraving on a seal the original and main cause of the most horrifying disaster that the fabric of this world has ever suffered? (For Pompey and Caesar are only side-shoots, consequent upon the first two rivals.) And in my own day I have seen the wisest heads in this Kingdom assembled with great ceremony and at great public expense to make treaties and agreements, while the details of them depended on sovereign chatter in the ladies’ drawing-room and on the inclination of some slip of a woman. The poets understood that rightly enough when they put all Greece and Asia to fire and bloody strife for the sake of an apple. Think why that man over there takes his sword and dagger and risks his life and honour; let him tell you the source of the quarrel: the occasion was so trivial 174
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– On Restraining Your Will – that he cannot tell you of it without blushing. When it is starting to ferment, all you need is a little wisdom. Once you have embarked, all the hawsers pull tight: then, great precautions are needed, much more difficult and important ones. How much easier it is never to get in than to get yourself out! We should act contrary to the reed which, when it first appears, throws up a long straight stem but afterwards, as though it were exhausted and had lost its wind, makes several dense nodules, as so many respites which indicate that it no longer has its original vigour and drive. We must rather begin gently and coolly, saving our breath for the encounter and our vigorous thrusts for finishing the job off. In their beginnings it is we who guide affairs and hold them in our power; but once they are set in motion, it is they which guide us and sweep us along and we who have to follow. Yet that does not mean that this stratagem of mine has relieved me of all difficulties or that I have not often found it very hard to master or bridle my emotions. They cannot always be restrained to the measure of their causes, and even their beginnings can be harsh and aggressive. Nevertheless there are fair savings to be derived from it, and some fruits too except by those whom no fruit can satisfy when no honour is to be had. For in truth such an action can only be valued by each man himself. You yourself are happier but you are not more esteemed, since you reformed 175

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– DRAWN FROM LIFE –

consciously striven hard to avoid exploiting to the detriment of anyone else or to inflate my rights beyond their rightful worth. In short I am happy to say that I have spent all my days virgin of lawsuits (even though they have not failed frequently to offer themselves to my service on many a just pretext if only I would listen) and virgin of actions against me. So I shall soon have spent a long life without serious harm given or received, and without being called anything worse than my name: a rare gift of Heaven.

Our greatest commotions arise from laughable principles and causes. What ruin befell our last Duke of Burgundy because of an action against him for a cartload of sheep-skins. And was not the engraving on a seal the original and main cause of the most horrifying disaster that the fabric of this world has ever suffered? (For Pompey and Caesar are only side-shoots, consequent upon the first two rivals.) And in my own day I have seen the wisest heads in this Kingdom assembled with great ceremony and at great public expense to make treaties and agreements, while the details of them depended on sovereign chatter in the ladies’ drawing-room and on the inclination of some slip of a woman. The poets understood that rightly enough when they put all Greece and Asia to fire and bloody strife for the sake of an apple.

Think why that man over there takes his sword and dagger and risks his life and honour; let him tell you the source of the quarrel: the occasion was so trivial

174

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