I presently turn my eyes upon myself to see in what condition I am; whatever concerns another relates to me; the accident that has befallen him gives me caution, and rouses me to turn my defence that way.  We every day and every hour say things of another that we might properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observation to our own concerns, as well as extend it to others.  And several authors have in this manner prejudiced their own cause by running headlong upon those they attack, and darting those shafts against their enemies, that are more properly, and with greater advantage, to be turned upon themselves.

The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the island of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation, did to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow and heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar with him; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, as also of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and the worthy opinion he had of his virtue.  “That poor boy,” said he, “never saw in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and is gone in a belief that I neither knew how to love him nor esteem him according to his desert.  For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular affection I had for him in my soul?  Was it not he himself, who ought to have had all the pleasure of it, and all the obligation?  I constrained and racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have by that means deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, I doubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold to me, having never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a tyrannical manner of proceeding.”

     [Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage without
     tears in her eyes.  “My God!” she exclaims, “how full is this book
     of good sense!” Ed.]

I find this complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended:  for, as I myself know by too certain experience, there is no so sweet consolation in the loss of friends as the conscience of having had no reserve or secret for them, and to have had with them a perfect and entire communication.  Oh my friend,—­[La Boetie.] am I the better for being sensible of this; or am I the worse?  I am, doubtless, much the better.  I am consoled and honoured, in the sorrow for his death.  Is it not a pious and a pleasing office of my life to be always upon my friend’s obsequies?  Can there be any joy equal to this privation?

I open myself to my family, as much as I can, and very willingly let them know the state of my opinion and good will towards them, as I do to everybody else:  I make haste to bring out and present myself to them; for I will not have them mistaken in me, in anything.  Amongst other particular customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports,—­[De Bello Gall., vi. r8.]—­was one, that the sons never presented themselves before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their company in public, till they began to bear arms; as if they would intimate by this, that it was also time for their fathers to receive them into their familiarity and acquaintance.