(37.) You say of a great man or of a person in office, that he is very obliging, kind, and delights in being serviceable; and you confirm this by giving details of everything he has done in a certain business, in which he knew you took some interest. I understand what you mean; you succeed without any solicitation, you have influence, you are known to the ministers of state, you stand well with the great. What else would you have me understand? A man tells you, “I think I am not very well treated by a certain personage; he has become proud since he has bettered his position; he treats me with contempt and no longer knows me.” You answer, “I have no reason to complain of him; on the contrary, I must commend him; he even seems to be to be very civil.” I believe I understand you too. You would let us know that some person in office has a regard for you, that in the anteroom he selects you from a large number of cultured gentlemen from whom he turns aside, to avoid the inconvenience of bowing to them or smiling on them. “To commend some one, to commend some great man,” is a nice phrase to start with, and which doubtless means to commend ourselves, when we relate all the good some great man has done to us, or never thought of doing to us. We praise the great to show we are intimate with them, rarely out of esteem or gratitude; we often do not know the persons we praise; vanity and levity not seldom prevail over resentment; we are very dissatisfied[465] with them, and yet we praise them. (38.) If it is dangerous to be concerned in a suspicious affair, it is much more so when you are an accomplice of the great; they will get clear and leave you to pay double, and for them and for yourself.[466] (39.) A princeʼs fortune is not large enough to pay a man for a base complacency, if he considers what it costs the man whom he would reward; and all his power is not sufficient to punish him, if he measures the punishment by the injury done to him. (40.) The nobility expose their lives for the safety of the state and the glory of their sovereign, and the magistrates relieve the prince of part of the burden of administering justice to his people. Both these functions are sublime and of great use, and men are scarcely capable of performing higher duties; but why men of the robe and the sword reciprocally despise each other is beyond my comprehension.