poraries.
Different people are vain for different reasons; we must inquire what
was our author's particular vanity; he may have lied in order to
attribute to himself or his friends actions which we should consider
dishonourable. Charles IX. falsely boasted of having organised the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew. There is, however, a kind of vanity which
is universal, and that is, the desire to appear to be a person of
exalted rank playing an important part in affairs. We must, therefore,
always distrust a statement which attributes to the author or his group
a high place in the world.[149]

(5) The author desired to please the public, or at least to avoid
shocking it. He has expressed sentiments and ideas in harmony with the
morality or the fashion of his public; he has distorted facts in order
to adapt them to the passions and prejudices of his time, even those
which he did not share. The purest types of this kind of falsehood are
found in ceremonial forms, official formulae, declarations prescribed by
etiquette, set speeches, polite phrases. The statements which come under
this head are so open to suspicion that we are unable to derive from
them any information about the facts stated. We are all aware of this so
far as relates to the contemporary formulae of which we see instances
every day, but we often forget it in the criticism of documents,
especially those belonging to an age from which few documents have come
down to us. No one would think of looking for the real sentiments of a
man in the assurances of respect with which he ends his letters. But
people believed for a long time in the humility of certain
ecclesiastical dignitaries of the middle ages, because, on the day of
their election, they began by refusing an office of which they declared
themselves unworthy, till at last comparison showed that this refusal
was a mere conventional form. And there are still scholars who, like the
Benedictines of the eighteenth century, look in the chancery-formulae of
a prince for information as to his piety or his liberality.[150]

In order to recognise these conventional declarations there are two
lines of general study to be pursued: the one is directed to the author,
and seeks to discover what was the public he addressed, for in one and
the same country there are usually several different publics, each of
which has its own code of morals or propriety; the other is directed
towards the public, and seeks to determine its mora