"Oh! I don't see her any more; that's all over, we are parted forever! I don't propose ever to be caught by one of those little hussies again; you spend an enormous amount of money, and sometimes you don't make your expenses. And they don't know how to appreciate a man; they don't know the difference between a poet and a gudgeon! So long as you have money in your pocket, and can stuff them from morning till night with bonbons, sweetmeats, ices, and syrups, and tell them they're adorable, take them to drive and to the theatre and to the country, and buy them all the fal-lals they happen to want, oh! bless my soul, then they're satisfied. You may be as stupid as a goose, as coarse as a street porter, as conceited as an Italian virtuoso, yet you're none the less delightful in the eyes of those girls." "There's a great deal of truth in what you say, neighbor; but, as a general rule, it is adulation and flattery that spoil both men and women; if we didn't kneel at their feet, they wouldn't look down on us from such a height. Flatterers, courtiers, low-lived sycophants, creep in everywhere and sometimes corrupt the most happily endowed nature. Kings, unfortunately, are more encompassed than other men by this servile swarm, which constantly hums in their ears a concert of exaggerated and insipid praise; it is when men tremble that they stoop lower than at any other time. Louis XI had more courtiers than Louis XII, Charles IX more than Henri IV. Richelieu and Mazarin did not take a step without being surrounded by a multitude of courtiers; they were feared, people trembled before them, but humiliated themselves and scribbled verses in their honor. Sully and Colbert had their admirers, but they knew how to repel flattery; they were too great to surround themselves with people whom they despised. If too frequent adulation did not increase our vanity, if the familiar atmosphere of praise did not give us too great confidence in our own deserts, how many shortcomings would those heroes and great captains have escaped, who, under difficult circumstances, have rejected the counsels of wisdom because they were accustomed only to the language of flattery, and deemed themselves invincible because a thousand voices had declared that they were, and because the man who has been exalted to the rank of a demigod does not readily decide to take the advice of his creatures! The pernicious effects of adulation date from a very early period: the serpent seduced the first woman by flattery. Almost always by the same means have women since then been seduced. Flattery destroyed Antiochus and Nebuchadnezzar, Semiramis and Mary Stuart, Cinq-Mars, Monmouth, Cleopatra, and Marion Delorme; Samson allowed his hair to be cut off while listening to the compliments of Delilah; Holofernes lost his head while listening to Judith's soft voice; Charles XII of Sweden, blinded by his victories, buried his army in the plains of Pultowa; the Maréchal