I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible effects:  innovation is of great lustre; but ’tis interdicted in this age, when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but novelties.  To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but ’tis less in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind.  In fine, occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my humour, and I heartily thank them for it.  Is there any who desires to be sick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he might put his art in practice?  I have never been of that wicked humour, and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city should elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed all I could to their tranquillity and ease.

He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to me by title of my good fortune.  And I am of such a composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any operation of my own.  I had sufficiently published to the world my unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it, and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of life that I have proposed to myself.

Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do:  for I am apt to promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to make good.  I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very well that I never much aimed at it: 

              “Mene huic confidere monstro! 
               Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos
               Ignorare?”

["Should I place confidence in this monster?  Should I be ignorant
of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?”
—­Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]

CHAPTER XI

OF CRIPPLES

’Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter in France.—­[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]—­How many changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really moving heaven and earth at once.  Yet nothing for all that stirs from its place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days, dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them; there was no