The count replied as follows: "What you have now said doth not
lessen my idea of your capacity, but confirms my opinion of the
ill effect of bad and low company. Can any man doubt whether it is
better to be a great statesman or a common thief? I have often
heard that the devil used to say, where or to whom I know not,
that it was better to reign in Hell than to be a valet-de-chambre
in Heaven, and perhaps he was in the right; but sure, if he had
had the choice of reigning in either, he would have chosen better.
The truth therefore is, that by low conversation we contract a
greater awe for high things than they deserve. We decline great
pursuits not from contempt but despair. The man who prefers the
high road to a more reputable way of making his fortune doth it
because he imagines the one easier than the other; but you
yourself have asserted, and with undoubted truth, that the same
abilities qualify you for undertaking, and the same means will
bring you to your end in both journeys--as in music it is the same
tune, whether you play it in a higher or a lower key. To instance
in some particulars: is it not the same qualification which
enables this man to hire himself as a servant, and to get into the
confidence and secrets of his master in order to rob him, and that
to undertake trusts of the highest nature with a design to break
and betray them? Is it less difficult by false tokens to deceive a
shopkeeper into the delivery of his goods, which you afterwards
run away with, than to impose upon him by outward splendour and
the appearance of fortune into a credit by which you gain and he
loses twenty times as much? Doth it not require more dexterity in
the fingers to draw out a man's purse from his pocket, or to take
a lady's watch from her side, without being perceived of any (an
excellence in which, without flattery, I am persuaded you have no