Indifference, I admit, is one of the qualities of statesmen, but of statesmen without conscience. They have to know how to look dry-eyed upon any event, to swallow bitter pills like malmsey, and, where others are concerned, to set at nought morality, justice, sufferings, provided that, in the midst of revolutions, they know how to find their own particular fortune. For, to those transcendent minds, the accident, be it good or bad, is bound to bring something; it must pay at the rate of a throne, a coffin, an oath, an outrage; the tariff is made out by the Mionnets[102] of catastrophes and affronts: I am not an expert in these numismatics. Unfortunately my indifference is a double one; I grow no more excited about my person than about facts. Contempt for the world came to St. Paul the Hermit[103] from his religious faith; contempt for society comes to me from my political incredulity. This incredulity would carry me high in a sphere of action, if, more careful of my foolish self, I were able at the same time to humiliate it and to clothe it. Do what I may, I remain a numskull of a decent man, naively stupid and quite bare, unable either to cringe or to help myself. D'Andilly[104], speaking of himself, seems to have described one side of my character: "I have never had any ambition," he says, "because I had too much, being unable to endure the dependence which confines within such narrow limits the effects of the inclination which God gave me for great things, glorious to the State, and capable of procuring the happiness of peoples, without its being possible for me to consider my private interests in all that. I was fit only for a king who would have reigned by himself and who would have had no other desire than to render his glory immortal." In that case, I was not fit for the kings of the day. Now that I have led you by the hand through the most secret winding ways of my merits, that I have made you feel all that is rare in my dispatches, like one of my colleagues at the Institute who is incessantly singing his own fame and teaching men to admire him, now I will tell you what I am leading up to with my boasting: by showing what they are able to do in public life, I wish to defend the men of letters against the men of diplomacy, the counting-house and the offices. The latter must not be allowed to take it into their heads to think themselves above men the smallest of whom overtops them by a head: when one knows so many things, like these practical gentlemen, one should at least not display gross ignorance. You talk of "facts;" well then, recognize "facts:" the majority of the great writers of antiquity, of the middle ages, of Modern England have been great statesmen, when they have deigned to descend to public life: