As soon as it is a question of influence and intrigue you may as well use these means to keep yourself in plenty, as to acquire, in the depths of poverty, the means of returning to your former position.  If you cultivate the arts which depend on the artist’s reputation, if you fit yourself for posts which are only obtained by favour, how will that help you when, rightly disgusted with the world, you scorn the steps by which you must climb.  You have studied politics and state-craft, so far so good; but how will you use this knowledge, if you cannot gain the ear of the ministers, the favourites, or the officials? if you have not the secret of winning their favour, if they fail to find you a rogue to their taste?  You are an architect or a painter; well and good; but your talents must be displayed.  Do you suppose you can exhibit in the salon without further ado?  That is not the way to set about it.  Lay aside the rule and the pencil, take a cab and drive from door to door; there is the road to fame.  Now you must know that the doors of the great are guarded by porters and flunkeys, who only understand one language, and their ears are in their palms.  If you wish to teach what you have learned, geography, mathematics, languages, music, drawing, even to find pupils, you must have friends who will sing your praises.  Learning, remember, gains more credit than skill, and with no trade but your own none will believe in your skill.  See how little you can depend on these fine “Resources,” and how many other resources are required before you can use what you have got.  And what will become of you in your degradation?  Misfortune will make you worse rather than better.  More than ever the sport of public opinion, how will you rise above the prejudices on which your fate depends?  How will you despise the vices and the baseness from which you get your living?  You were dependent on wealth, now you are dependent on the wealthy; you are still a slave and a poor man into the bargain.  Poverty without freedom, can a man sink lower than this!

But if instead of this recondite learning adapted to feed the mind, not the body, you have recourse, at need, to your hands and your handiwork, there is no call for deceit, your trade is ready when required.  Honour and honesty will not stand in the way of your living.  You need no longer cringe and lie to the great, nor creep and crawl before rogues, a despicable flatterer of both, a borrower or a thief, for there is little to choose between them when you are penniless.  Other people’s opinions are no concern of yours, you need not pay court to any one, there is no fool to flatter, no flunkey to bribe, no woman to win over.  Let rogues conduct the affairs of state; in your lowly rank you can still be an honest man and yet get a living.  You walk into the first workshop of your trade.  “Master, I want work.”  “Comrade, take your place and work.”  Before dinner-time you have earned your dinner.  If you are sober and industrious, before the week is out you will have earned your keep for another week; you will have lived in freedom, health, truth, industry, and righteousness.  Time is not wasted when it brings these returns.