as life is not better for being long, so death is better for being not long.  I do not so much evade being dead, as I enter into confidence with dying.  I wrap and shroud myself into the storm that is to blind and carry me away with the fury of a sudden and insensible attack.  Moreover, if it should fall out that, as some gardeners say, roses and violets spring more odoriferous near garlic and onions, by reason that the last suck and imbibe all the ill odour of the earth; so, if these depraved natures should also attract all the malignity of my air and climate, and render it so much better and purer by their vicinity, I should not lose all.  That cannot be:  but there may be something in this, that goodness is more beautiful and attractive when it is rare; and that contrariety and diversity fortify and consolidate well-doing within itself, and inflame it by the jealousy of opposition and by glory.  Thieves and robbers, of their special favour, have no particular spite at me; no more have I to them:  I should have my hands too full.  Like consciences are lodged under several sorts of robes; like cruelty, disloyalty, rapine; and so much the worse, and more falsely, when the more secure and concealed under colour of the laws.  I less hate an open professed injury than one that is treacherous; an enemy in arms, than an enemy in a gown.  Our fever has seized upon a body that is not much the worse for it; there was fire before, and now ’tis broken out into a flame; the noise is greater, not the evil.  I ordinarily answer such as ask me the reason of my travels, “That I know very well what I fly from, but not what I seek.”  If they tell me that there may be as little soundness amongst foreigners, and that their manners are no better than ours:  I first reply, that it is hard to be believed;

“Tam multa:  scelerum facies!”

     ["There are so many forms of crime.”—­Virgil, Georg., i. 506.]

secondly, that it is always gain to change an ill condition for one that is uncertain; and that the ills of others ought not to afflict us so much as our own.

I will not here omit, that I never mutiny so much against France, that I am not perfectly friends with Paris; that city has ever had my heart from my infancy, and it has fallen out, as of excellent things, that the more beautiful cities I have seen since, the more the beauty of this still wins upon my affection.  I love her for herself, and more in her own native being, than in all the pomp of foreign and acquired embellishments.  I love her tenderly, even to her warts and blemishes.  I am a Frenchman only through this great city, great in people, great in the felicity of her situation; but, above all, great and incomparable in variety and diversity of commodities:  the glory of France, and one of the most noble ornaments of the world.  May God drive our divisions far from her.  Entire and united, I think her sufficiently defended from all other violences.  I give her caution that, of all sorts of people, those will be the worst that shall set her in discord; I have no fear for her, but of herself, and, certainly, I have as much fear for her as for any other part of the kingdom.  Whilst she shall continue, I shall never want a retreat, where I may stand at bay, sufficient to make me amends for parting with any other retreat.