Montesquieu

“ Who is that tall young man who wears his own hair, and has more impertinence than wit? How comes it that he speaks louder than the others, and is so charmed with himself for being in the world?” “That is a great lady-killer,” he replied. With these words some people entered, others left, and all rose. ”

“ Can it be that your upper classes are not so well trained as those of other nations?” “That man,” answered he, laughing, “is a farmer-general; he is as much above others in wealth, as he is inferior to us all by birth. He might have the best people in Paris at his table, if he could make up his mind never to eat in his own house. ”

“ Our foreign aspect offends nobody; indeed, we are delighted at the surprise which people show on finding us not altogether without manners; for the French imagine that men are not among the products of our country. Nevertheless, I must admit that they are well worth undeceiving.
I spent some days in the country near Paris at the house of a man of some note, who delights in having company with him. He has a very amiable wife, who, along with great modesty, possesses what the secluded life they lead stifles in our Persian women, a charming gaiety. ”

“ He believes himself so essential to our history that he imagines it came to an end when he retired; some wounds he has received mean, simply, the dissolution of the monarchy; and, unlike the philosophers who maintain that enjoyment is only in the present, and that the past is as if it had not been, he, on the contrary, delights in nothing but the past, and exists only in his old campaigns; he breathes the air of the age that has gone by, just as heroes ought to live in that which is to come. ”

“ He has been employed in a small post, where he will retail his adventures for the rest of his days; but he will never get any further; the path of honour is closed to him.” “And why?” asked I. “It is a maxim in France,” replied he, “never to advance officers whose patience has been worn out as subalterns; we look upon them as men whose minds have been narrowed by detail; and who, through a constant application to small things, are become incapable of great ones. ”

“ I, of course, have nothing to say against it; we must live with people as we find them; those who are said to be well-bred are often only those who are exquisite in their vices; and perhaps it is with them as with poisons, the more subtle, the more dangerous. ”

“ He wrote their epithalamium when they were married, and it is the best thing he has done, for the marriage has been as fortunate as he prophesied it would be.
“You will not believe, perhaps,” added he, “prepossessed as you are in favour of the East, that there are among us happy marriages, and wives whose virtue is a sufficient guard. This couple, here, enjoy untroubled peace; everybody loves and esteems them; only one thing is amiss: in their good-nature they receive all kinds of people, which makes the company at their house sometimes not altogether unexceptionable. ”

“ Why! he is a necessity; he is the sweetener of solitude; then there are little lessons, officious cares, set visits; he cures a headache better than any man in the world; he is incomparable.”
“But, if I may trouble you again, tell me who that ill-dressed person is opposite us? He makes occasional grimaces, and does not speak like the others; and without wit enough to talk, he talks that he may have wit.” “That,” answered he, “is a poet, the grotesquest of human kind. These sort of people declare that they are born what they are ”

“ I replied as civilly as I could, and we went out together. “I have come to the country,” said he, “to please the mistress of the house, with whom I am not on the worst of terms. There is a certain woman in the world who will be rather out of humour; but what can one do? I visit the finest women in Paris ”

“ Stranger as I was, I had nothing better to do than to study the crowd of people who came and went without ceasing, affording me a constant change of subject for contemplation. I noticed at once one man, whose simplicity pleased me ”

“ He smiles benignly when he is addressed; his attire is more modest, but not less carefully adjusted than that of your women.” “That,” answered he, “is a preacher, and, which is worse, a confessor. Such as he is, he knows more of their own affairs than the husbands; he is acquainted with the women’s weak side, and they also know his.” ”

“ Of this number are such as have grown old in obscure warfare; they can succeed only at what they have been doing all their lives; and it would be ill-advised to start them on fresh employment when age has weakened their powers. ”