“But, because such spirits were not elected or destined to an imperial command, are we therefore to imagine they came off without a booty? or that they contented themselves with the share in common with their comrades?  Surely, no.  In civil life, doubtless, the same genius, the same endowments, have often composed the statesman and the prig, for so we call what the vulgar name a thief.  The same parts, the same actions, often promote men to the head of superior societies, which raise them to the head of lower; and where is the essential difference if the one ends on Tower-hill and the other at Tyburn?  Hath the block any preference to the gallows, or the ax to the halter, but was given them by the ill-guided judgment of men?  You will pardon me, therefore, if I am not so hastily inflamed with the common outside of things, nor join the general opinion in preferring one state to another.  A guinea is as valuable in a leathern as in an embroidered purse; and a cod’s head is a cod’s head still, whether in a pewter or a silver dish.”

The count replied as follows:  “What you have now said doth not lessen my idea of your capacity, but confirms my opinion of the ill effect of bad and low company.  Can any man doubt whether it is better to be a great statesman or a common thief?  I have often heard that the devil used to say, where or to whom I know not, that it was better to reign in Hell than to be a valet-de-chambre in Heaven, and perhaps he was in the right; but sure, if he had had the choice of reigning in either, he would have chosen better.  The truth therefore is, that by low conversation we contract a greater awe for high things than they deserve.  We decline great pursuits not from contempt but despair.  The man who prefers the high road to a more reputable way of making his fortune doth it because he imagines the one easier than the other; but you yourself have asserted, and with undoubted truth, that the same abilities qualify you for undertaking, and the same means will bring you to your end in both journeys—­as in music it is the same tune, whether you play it in a higher or a lower key.  To instance in some particulars:  is it not the same qualification which enables this man to hire himself as a servant, and to get into the confidence and secrets of his master in order to rob him, and that to undertake trusts of the highest nature with a design to break and betray them?  Is it less difficult by false tokens to deceive a shopkeeper into the delivery of his goods, which you afterwards run away with, than to impose upon him by outward splendour and the appearance of fortune into a credit by which you gain and he loses twenty times as much?  Doth it not require more dexterity in the fingers to draw out a man’s purse from his pocket, or to take a lady’s watch from her side, without being perceived of any (an excellence in which, without flattery, I am persuaded you have no superior), than to cog a die or to shuffle a pack of cards?  Is not as