rofession requires, more than any
other, the nicest and most distinguished good-breeding. You will
negotiate with very little success, if you do not previously, by your
manners, conciliate and engage the affections of those with whom you are
to negotiate. Can you ever get into the confidence and the secrets of the
courts where you may happen to reside, if you have not those pleasing,
insinuating manners, which alone can procure them? Upon my word, I do not
say too much, when I say that superior good-breeding, insinuating
manners, and genteel address, are half your business. Your knowledge will
have but very little influence upon the mind, if your manners prejudice
the heart against you; but, on the other hand, how easily will you DUPE
the understanding, where you have first engaged the heart? and hearts are
by no means to be gained by that mere common civility which everybody
practices. Bowing again to those who bow to you, answering dryly those
who speak to you, and saying nothing offensive to anybody, is such
negative good-breeding that it is only not being a brute; as it would be
but a very poor commendation of any man's cleanliness to say that he did
not stink. It is an active, cheerful, officious, seducing, good-breeding
that must gain you the good-will and first sentiments of men, and the
affections of the women. You must carefully watch and attend to their
passions, their tastes, their little humors and weaknesses, and 'aller au
devant'. You must do it at the same time with alacrity and
'empressement', and not as if you graciously condescended to humor their
weaknesses.

For instance, suppose you invited anybody to dine or sup with you, you
ought to recollect if you had observed that they had any favorite dish,
and take care to provide it for them; and when it came you should say,
You SEEMED TO ME, AT SUCH AND SUCH A PLACE, TO GIVE THIS DISH A
PREFERENCE, AND THEREFORE I ORDERED IT; THIS IS THE WINE THAT I OBSERVED
YOU LIKED, AND THEREFORE I PROCURED SOME. The more trifling these things
are, the more they prove your attention for the person, and are
consequently the more engaging. Consult your own breast, and recollect
how these little attentions, when shown you by others, flatter that
degree of self-love and vanity from which no man living is free. Reflect
how they incline and attract you to that person, and how you are
propitiated afterward to all which that person says or does. The same
causes will have the sa