I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but withal, beyond these limits, ’tis nothing but confusion; ’tis the largest extent we can grant to our own claims.  The more we amplify our need and our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of Fortune and adversities.  The career of our desires ought to be circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves.  Actions that are carried on without this reflection—­a near and essential reflection, I mean—­such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.

Most of our business is farce: 

               “Mundus universus exercet histrioniam.”
               —­[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]

We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the skin from the shirt:  ’tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the breast.  I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along with them even to the close-stool:  I cannot make them distinguish the salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their train, or their mule: 

     “Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant.”

     ["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn
     nature.”—­Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]

They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking, according to the height of their magisterial place.  The Mayor of Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation.  Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery there is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice or absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to take the calling upon him:  ’tis the usage of his country, and there is money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of it, such as it is.  But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as James and Peter, to himself, at all events.