An honest man, with all his modesty, cannot prevent people saying of him what a dishonest man says of himself. (22.) Cléon[213] talks always rather rudely or inaccurately; he does either the one or the other; but he says he cannot help it, and that it is his natural disposition to speak just as he thinks. (23.) There are such things as to speak well, to speak easily, to speak correctly, and to speak seasonably. We offend against the last way of speaking if we mention a sumptuous entertainment we have just been present at before people who have not had enough to eat; if we boast of our good health before invalids; if we talk of our riches, our income, and our fine furniture to a man who has not so much as an income or a dwelling; in a word, if we speak of our prosperity before people who are wretched; such a conversation is too much for them, and the comparison which they then make between their condition and ours is very painful. (24.) “As for you,” says Euthyphron,[214] “you are rich, or ought to be so, for you have a yearly income of ten thousand _livres_,[215] all from land. I think that glorious! charming! and a man could be happy with much less.” The person who talks in this fashion has fifty thousand _livres_ a year, and thinks he has not half what he deserves. He settles what youʼll have to pay, values what you are worth, determines what you have to spend; and if he thought you deserved a better fortune, and even such a one as he himself aspires to, he would be certain to wish it to you. He is not the only man who makes such wretched estimations or such odious comparisons; the world is full of Euthyphrons. (25.) A person inclined to the usual flattery, and accustomed to praise and exaggeration, congratulates[216] Theodemus on a sermon he did not hear, and of which no one had, as yet, given him an account. He extols his genius, his delivery, and, above all, his excellent memory, when, in truth, Theodemus had stopped short in the middle of his sermon, and had forgotten what he wished to say.[217] (26.) Some abrupt, restless, conceited men, who are unemployed, and have no manner of business to call them away, will dismiss you from their presence in a few words, and only think to get rid of you; you are still speaking to them, and they are already gone and have disappeared. They are as impertinent as those people who stop you only to bore you; but the former are perhaps less irksome.