(18.) Champagne,[272] rising from a prolonged dinner, quite gorged, and his head full of the agreeable fumes of Avenay or Sillery,[273] signs an order for a tax to be levied which would have produced a famine in a whole province, if other means had not been taken. He is excusable; for how can a man whose digestion is just beginning understand that people could anywhere die of starvation. (19.) Sylvanus[274] has with his money bought rank and another name; he is lord of the same manor where his forefathers had been paying the _taille_;[275] formerly he was not good enough to be Cleobulusʼ page, but now he is his son-in-law? (20.) Dorus[276] is carried in a litter along the Appian Way;[277] his freedmen and slaves run before him to clear the way and to turn aside the people; he wants nothing but Lictors;[278] he enters Rome with quite a retinue, a triumphant foil to the meanness and poverty of his father Sanga. (21.) No one makes a better use of his fortune than Periander;[279] it gives him a certain rank, influence, and authority; people no longer ask him to be their friend, but they implore his protection. In the beginning he spoke of himself as “such a man as I am,” but soon he says “a man of my rank;” for he pretends to be one of these men, and there are none who borrow money of him, or eat his dinners, which are exquisite, who dare dispute it. His residence is splendid; the outside is Doric, and there is no gate but a portico. Is it a private house or a temple? People are at a loss to know which. He is lord paramount of the entire precincts; every one envies him, and would rejoice at his downfall; his wifeʼs pearl necklace has made all the ladies of the neighbourhood her enemies. Everything in him is of a piece, and nothing yet belies that grandeur he has acquired, for which he has paid and does not owe anything. But why did his old and feeble father not die twenty years ago before Perianderʼs name was ever mentioned? How can any man ever endure those odious invitations to a funeral[280] which always reveal the real origin of the deceased, and often put the widows or the heirs to the blush? How shall he hide them from the eyes of the envious, malicious, keen-sighted town, and offend a thousand people who will insist on taking their due places at all funerals? Besides, what would you have him do? Shall he style his father _Noble homme_ and perhaps _Honorable homme_, whilst he himself is dubbed _Messire_?[281] (22.) How many men are like trees, already strong and full grown, which are transplanted into some gardens, to the astonishment of those people who behold them in these fine spots, where they never saw them grow, and who neither know their beginning nor their progress! (23.) If some dead were to rise again and saw who bore their illustrious names, and that their ancient lands, their castles, and their venerable seats were owned by the very men whose fathers had perhaps been their tenants, what would they think of our age?