Usbek to Rica, at * * *.
SOME time ago, a man of my acquaintance said to me, “I promised to bring you to the best houses in Paris; I will take you now to a great lord, who supports his dignity better than any man in the kingdom.” “What do you mean, Sir? is it that his behaviour is more polite, more affable than that of others? “No,” said he. “Oh! I understand; he takes all opportunities to make every body who comes near him sensible of his superiority: If it be so, I have no business to go there: I allow him his whole demand, and acquiesce in the inferiority he condemns me to.” Yet I must go there, and I saw a little man, so lofty; he took a pinch of snuff with so much dignity; he blowed his nose so unmercifully; he spit with so much phlegm, and caressed his dogs in a manner so offensive to the company, that I could not but wonder at him. “Ah, said I to myself, if, when I was at the court of Persia, I hehaved so, I behaved like a great fool!” We must, Rica, have been naturally very bad, to have practised a hundred little insults towards those people who came every day to shew their good will to us. They knew very well our superiority over them; and, if they had been ignorant of it, the favours we every day conferred on them, must have convinced them of it. Having no necessity to do any thing to make ourselves respected, we did all to render ourselves beloved: we were accessible to the meanest; amidst those honours, which commonly harden the heart, they experienced the sensibility of ours; they found only our souls superior to them; we descended to their wants. But when it was necessary to support the dignity of our prince in public ceremonies, when it was proper to make our nation respectable to strangers; or lastly, when in cases of danger it was necessary to animate our soldiers, we ascended a hundred times higher than we had before descended; recalled all our dignity into our looks; and it was found that we sometimes properly represented ourselves.