So we read in Molière. And Corneille has a play (not original) entirely devoted to the illustration of this subject, showing _qu’il faut bonne mémoire acrès qu’on a menti_; the Menteur κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, being one who _entasse fourbe sur fourbe_, and is constrained by the law of his nature, at least of habit, which is second nature, to be ever adding to the heap of lies to which he has committed himself. A Spanish proverb—and _Le Menteur_ is from the Spanish—declares that “for an honest man half his wits is enough, while the whole are too little for a knave;” the ways, that is, as Archbishop Trench expounds the adage, of truth and uprightness are so simple and plain, that a little wit is abundantly sufficient for those who walk in them; whereas the ways of falsehood and fraud are so perplexed and tangled, that sooner or later all the wit of the cleverest rogue will not preserve him from being entangled therein—a truth often and wonderfully confirmed in the lives of evil men. Among the aphorisms of Dean Swift we read: “He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.” It has been called the severe, but appropriate, punishment of historians who desert the paths of truth for those of paradox, to be compelled to defend the falsehood to which they have committed themselves against the ever-accumulating evidences of the truth. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, feelingly sketches the case of one who, being unprepared and accosted suddenly, says hastily that which is irreconcileable with strict truth; then to substantiate and make it look probable, misrepresents or invents something else; and so has woven round himself a mesh which will entangle his conscience through many a weary day and many a sleepless night.[31] One burden laid on fault, he goes on to show, is that chain of entanglement which seems to drag down to fresh sins. “One step necessitates many others. One fault leads to another, and crime to crime. The soul gravitates downward beneath its burden. It was profound knowledge which prophetically refused to limit Peter’s sin to once. ‘Verily I say unto thee ... thou shalt deny me thrice.’”