myself to see in what condition I am; whatever concerns another relates
to me; the accident that has befallen him gives me caution, and rouses me
to turn my defence that way. We every day and every hour say things of
another that we might properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our
observation to our own concerns, as well as extend it to others. And
several authors have in this manner prejudiced their own cause by running
headlong upon those they attack, and darting those shafts against their
enemies, that are more properly, and with greater advantage, to be turned
upon themselves.

The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the island
of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation,
did to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow
and heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar with
him; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the
opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, as
also of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and the
worthy opinion he had of his virtue. "That poor boy," said he, "never
saw in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and is gone in a
belief that I neither knew how to love him nor esteem him according to
his desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular
affection I had for him in my soul? Was it not he himself, who ought to
have had all the pleasure of it, and all the obligation? I constrained
and racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have by
that means deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, I
doubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold
to me, having never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a
tyrannical manner of proceeding."

[Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage without