setting forth the excellent state of a private family, says:  “of which a the master is the same within, by his own virtue and temper, that he is abroad, for fear of the laws and report of men.”  And it was a worthy saying of Julius Drusus, to the masons who offered him, for three thousand crowns, to put his house in such a posture that his neighbours should no longer have the same inspection into it as before; “I will give you,” said he, “six thousand to make it so that everybody may see into every room.”  ’Tis honourably recorded of Agesilaus, that he used in his journeys always to take up his lodgings in temples, to the end that the people and the gods themselves might pry into his most private actions.  Such a one has been a miracle to the world, in whom neither his wife nor servant has ever seen anything so much as remarkable; few men have been admired by their own domestics; no one was ever a prophet, not merely in his own house, but in his own country, says the experience of histories:  —­[No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, said Marshal Catinat]—­’tis the same in things of nought, and in this low example the image of a greater is to be seen.  In my country of Gascony, they look upon it as a drollery to see me in print; the further off I am read from my own home, the better I am esteemed.  I purchase printers in Guienne; elsewhere they purchase me.  Upon this it is that they lay their foundation who conceal themselves present and living, to obtain a name when they are dead and absent.  I had rather have a great deal less in hand, and do not expose myself to the world upon any other account than my present share; when I leave it I quit the rest.  See this functionary whom the people escort in state, with wonder and applause, to his very door; he puts off the pageant with his robe, and falls so much the lower by how much he was higher exalted:  in himself within, all is tumult and degraded.  And though all should be regular there, it will require a vivid and well-chosen judgment to perceive it in these low and private actions; to which may be added, that order is a dull, sombre virtue.  To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are actions of renown; to reprehend, laugh, sell, pay, love, hate, and gently and justly converse with a man’s own family and with himself; not to relax, not to give a man’s self the lie, is more rare and hard, and less remarkable.  By which means, retired lives, whatever is said to the contrary, undergo duties of as great or greater difficulty than the others do; and private men, says Aristotle,’ serve virtue more painfully and highly than those in authority do:  we prepare ourselves for eminent occasions, more out of glory than conscience.  The shortest way to arrive at glory, would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory:  and the virtue of Alexander appears to me of much less vigour in his great theatre, than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment.  I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander,