or favour.  How many gallant men have rather chosen to lose their lives than to be debtors for them?  I hate to subject myself to any sort of obligation, but above all, to that which binds me by the duty of honour.  I think nothing so dear as what has been given me, and this because my will lies at pawn under the title of gratitude, and more willingly accept of services that are to be sold; I feel that for the last I give nothing but money, but for the other I give myself.

The knot that binds me by the laws of courtesy binds me more than that of civil constraint; I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener, than by myself.  Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more engaged when men simply rely upon it?  In a bond, my faith owes nothing, because it has nothing lent it; let them trust to the security they have taken without me.  I had much rather break the wall of a prison and the laws themselves than my own word.  I am nice, even to superstition, in keeping my promises, and, therefore, upon all occasions have a care to make them uncertain and conditional.  To those of no great moment, I add the jealousy of my own rule, to make them weight; it wracks and oppresses me with its own interest.  Even in actions wholly my own and free, if I once say a thing, I conceive that I have bound myself, and that delivering it to the knowledge of another, I have positively enjoined it my own performance.  Methinks I promise it, if I but say it:  and therefore am not apt to say much of that kind.  The sentence that I pass upon myself is more severe than that of a judge, who only considers the common obligation; but my conscience looks upon it with a more severe and penetrating eye.  I lag in those duties to which I should be compelled if I did not go: 

     “Hoc ipsum ita justum est, quod recte fit, si est voluntarium.”

     ["This itself is so far just, that it is rightly done, if it is
     voluntary.”—­Cicero, De Offic., i. 9.]

If the action has not some splendour of liberty, it has neither grace nor honour: 

          “Quod vos jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent:” 

     ["That which the laws compel us to do, we scarcely do with a will.” 
     —­Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 44.]

where necessity draws me, I love to let my will take its own course: 

          “Quia quicquid imperio cogitur, exigenti magis,
          quam praestanti, acceptum refertur.”

     ["For whatever is compelled by power, is more imputed to him that
     exacts than to him that performs.”—­Valerius Maximus, ii. 2, 6.]

I know some who follow this rule, even to injustice; who will sooner give than restore, sooner lend than pay, and will do them the least good to whom they are most obliged.  I don’t go so far as that, but I’m not far off.