When Cardinal de Monte was elected pope, before he left the conclave, he bestowed a cardinal’s hat upon a servant, whose chief merit consisted in the daily attentions he paid to his holiness’s monkey!

Louis Barbier owed all his good fortune to the familiar knowledge he had of Rabelais.  He knew his Rabelais by heart.  This served to introduce him to the Duke of Orleans, who took great pleasure in reading that author.  It was for this he gave him an abbey, and he was gradually promoted till he became a cardinal.

George Villiers was suddenly raised from private station, and loaded with wealth and honours by James the First, merely for his personal beauty.[4] Almost all the favourites of James became so from their handsomeness.[5]

M. de Chamillart, minister of France, owed his promotion merely to his being the only man who could beat Louis XIV. at billiards.  He retired with a pension, after ruining the finances of his country.

The Duke of Luynes was originally a country lad, who insinuated himself into the favour of Louis XIII. then young, by making bird-traps (pies-grieches) to catch sparrows.  It was little expected (says Voltaire) that these puerile amusements were to be terminated by a most sanguinary revolution.  De Luynes, after causing his patron, the Marshal D’Ancre, to be assassinated, and the queen-mother to be imprisoned, raised himself to a title and the most tyrannical power.

Sir Walter Raleigh owed his promotion to an act of gallantry to Queen Elizabeth, and Sir Christopher Hatton owed his preferment to his dancing:  Queen Elizabeth, observes Granger, with all her sagacity, could not see the future lord chancellor in the fine dancer.  The same writer says, “Nothing could form a more curious collection of memoirs than anecdotes of preferment.”  Could the secret history of great men be traced, it would appear that merit is rarely the first step to advancement.  It would much oftener be found to be owing to superficial qualifications, and even vices.

NOBILITY.

Francis the First was accustomed to say, that when the nobles of his kingdom came to court, they were received by the world as so many little kings; that the day after they were only beheld as so many princes; but on the third day they were merely considered as so many gentlemen, and were confounded among the crowd of courtiers.—­It was supposed that this was done with a political view of humbling the proud nobility; and for this reason Henry IV. frequently said aloud, in the presence of the princes of the blood, We are all gentlemen.

It is recorded of Philip the Third of Spain, that while he exacted the most punctilious respect from the grandees, he saluted the peasants.  He would never be addressed but on the knees; for which he gave this artful excuse, that as he was of low stature, every one would have appeared too high for him.  He showed himself rarely even to his grandees, that he might the better support his haughtiness and repress their pride.  He also affected to speak to them by half words; and reprimanded them if they did not guess the rest.  In a word, he omitted nothing that could mortify his nobility.