I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit a necessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quite round, I found myself bare.  To let one’s self fall plump down, and from so great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and fortunate friendship:  these are very rare, if there be any.  At last, I saw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if it should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune’s favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and attach myself and look to myself all the more closely.  Men on all occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own, which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to arm himself.  Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch as no one is arrived at himself.  And I was satisfied that they were profitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be admonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of wood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness.  I have a great while preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate myself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside.  A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; of which God knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what they signify.  I, moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to the persuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently refuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome.  Now for so indocile a spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down with good sound strokes of a mallet.  Secondly, that this accident served me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last, should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing myself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state.  The true liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself: 

          “Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate.”

     ["He is most potent who is master of himself.”—­Seneca, Ep., 94.]

In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his fortune:  by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with the strongest and most vigorous provisions.  Let us thank fortune, that has not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some who could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their misfortunes.  As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other