to be overcome. Now for so indocile a
spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and
is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down
with good sound strokes of a mallet. Secondly, that this accident served
me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of
fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last,
should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing
myself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state. The
true liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself:

"Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate."

["He is most potent who is master of himself."--Seneca, Ep., 94.]

In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and
common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these
thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees
himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his
fortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with
the strongest and most vigorous provisions. Let us thank fortune, that
has not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some
who could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their
misfortunes. As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other
states without regret that I was not present, the better to consider
them, so does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeing
with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form and
symptoms; and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have been
destined to be present therein, and thereby to instruct myself. So do
we eagerly covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres,
the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not without
compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our
displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events. Nothing tickles
that does not pinch. And good historians skip over, as stagnant water
and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which
they know that we invite them.

I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice of
its repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of my
life amid the ruin of my country. I lend myself my patience somewhat too
cheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me