return thanks to one stealthily, in a corner, in a whisper. This is
not modesty, but a kind of denying of the debt: it is the part of
an ungrateful man not to express his gratitude before witnesses.
Some object to any accounts being kept between them and their
benefactors, and wish no brokers to be employed or witnesses to be
called, but merely to give their own signature to a receipt. Those
men do the like, who take care to let as few persons as possible
know of the benefits which they have received. They fear to receive
them in public, in order that their success may be attributed
rather to their own talents than to the help of others: they are
very seldom to be found in attendance upon those to whom they owe
their lives and their fortunes, and thus, while avoiding the
imputation of servility, they incur that of ingratitude.

XXIV. Some men speak in the most offensive terms of those to whom
they owe most. There are men whom it is safer to affront than to
serve, for their dislike leads them to assume the airs of persons
who are not indebted to us: although nothing more is expected of
them than that they should remember what they owe us, refreshing
their memory from time to time, because no one can be grateful who
forgets a kindness, and he who remembers it, by so doing proves his
gratitude. We ought neither to receive benefits with a fastidious
air, nor yet with a slavish humility: for if a man does not care
for a benefit when it is freshly bestowed--a time at which all
presents please us most--what will he do when its first charms have
gone off? Others receive with an air of disdain, as much as to say.
"I do not want it; but as you wish it so very much, I will allow
you to give it to me." Others take benefits languidly, and leave
the giver in doubt as to whether they know that they have received
them; others barely open their lips in thanks, and would be less