No creature is exempt from adversity; every man eats his bread in pain and sorrow: God Almighty promised it to our first parents, and he has performed it very faithfully ever since to all people. Yet there are degrees and distinctions of sorrow, and the troubles and vexations of the mind are greater than those of the body; the anxiety of the wise is of one sort, and that of the fool of another, but that of the fool is the greater of the two (though some are of a contrary opinion) because he is less capable of comfort. The poor people, who labour, drudge and toil to maintain themselves and their children, and pay their taxes and subsidies to their princes, would have but little comfort in this world if princes and great lords were sensible of nothing but pleasure, and they of nothing but sorrow and misery. But the thing is quite otherwise; for, should I endeavour to give an account of the sufferings and disorders which (for these thirty years) I have seen endured by persons of quality of both sexes, it would swell to a large volume. I do not mean such persons as Boccace mentions in his book[465], but such as raise the envy of all people, by their riches, health, and prosperity. Those who have not conversed with them so much as I have done, believe the condition of great persons to be the happiest in the world; but I have seen their troubles and disquiets, aroused upon such trifling occasions, as persons at a distance could hardly believe; an idle apprehension or an extravagant report disturbs them extremely; and this is the secret distemper that reigns in the courts of great princes, from whence many mischiefs arise to the sovereign, his ministers and subjects; and it is so great a shortener of life, that there is scarce a king of France (since the time of Charlemagne) who lived to be sixty years old.