enemies; the chances and changes of life require this. Maintain an
attitude which is neither cold nor hot; find the medium point at
which a man can safely hold intercourse with others without
compromising himself. Yes, believe me, the honest man is as far
from the base cowardice of Philinte as he is from the harsh virtue
of Alceste. The genius of the poet is displayed in the mind of
this true medium; certainly all minds do enjoy more the ridicule
of virtue than the sovereign contempt of easy-going selfishness
which underlies that picture of it; but all, nevertheless, are
prompted to keep themselves from either extreme.
As to frivolity, if it causes fools to proclaim you a charming
man, others who are accustomed to judge of men’s capacities and
fathom character, will winnow out your tare and bring you to
disrepute, for frivolity is the resource of weak natures, and
weakness is soon appraised in a society which regards its members
as nothing more than organs — and perhaps justly, for nature
herself puts to death imperfect beings. A woman’s protecting
instincts may be roused by the pleasure she feels in supporting
the weak against the strong, and in leading the intelligence of
the heart to victory over the brutality of matter; but society,
less a mother than a stepmother, adores only the children who
flatter her vanity.
As to ardent enthusiasm, that first sublime mistake of youth,
which finds true happiness in using its powers, and begins by
being its own dupe before it is the dupe of others, keep it within
the region of the heart’s communion, keep it for woman and for
God. Do not hawk its treasures in the bazaars of society or of
politics, where trumpery will be offered in exchange for them.
Believe the voice which commands you to be noble in all things
when it also prays you not to expend your forces uselessly.
Unhappily, men will rate you according to your usefulness, and not
according to your worth. To use an image which I think will strike
your poetic mind, let a cipher be what it may, immeasurable in
size, written in gold, or written in pencil, it is only a cipher
after all. A man of our times has said, “No zeal, above all, no
zeal!” The lesson may be sad, but it is true, and it saves the
soul from wasting its bloom. Hide your pure sentiments, or put
them in regions inaccessible, where their blossoms may be
passionately admired, where the artist may dream amorously of his
master-piece. But duties, my friend, are not sentiments. To do
what we ought is by no means to do what we like. A man who would
give his life enthusiastically for a woman must be ready to die
coldly for his country.
One of the most important rules in the science of manners is that
of almost absolute silence about ourselves. Play a little comedy
for your own instruction; talk of yourself to acquaintances, tell
them about your sufferings, your pleasures, your business, and you
will see how indifference succeeds pretended interest; then
annoyance follows, and if the mistress of the house does not find
some civil way of stopping you the company will disappear under
various pretexts adroitly seized. Would you, on the other hand,
gather sympathies about you and be spoken of as amiable and witty,
and a true friend? talk to others of themselves, find a way to
bring them forward, and brows will clear, lips will smile, and
after you leave the room all present will praise you. Your
conscience and the voice of your own heart will show you the line
where the cowardice of flattery begins and the courtesy of
intercourse ceases.
One word more about a young man’s demeanor in public. My dear
friend, youth is always inclined to a rapidity of judgment which
does it honor, but also injury. This was why the old system of
education obliged young people to keep silence and study life in a
probationary period beside their elders. Formerly, as you know,
nobility, like art, had its apprentices, its pages, devoted body
and soul to the masters who maintained them. To-day youth is
forced in a hot-house; it is trained to judge of thoughts,
actions, and writings with biting severity; it slashes with a
blade that has not been fleshed. Do not make this mistake. Such
judgments will seem like censures to many about you, who would
sooner pardon an open rebuke than a secret wound. Young people are
pitiless because they know nothing of life and its difficulties.
The old critic is kind and considerate, the young critic is
implacable; the one knows nothing, the other knows all. Moreover,
at the bottom of all human actions there is a labyrinth of
determining reasons on which God reserves for himself the final
judgment. Be severe therefore to none but yourself.
Your future is before you; but no one in the world can make his
way unaided. Therefore, make use of my father’s house; its doors
are open to you; the connections that you will create for yourself
under his roof will serve you in a hundred ways. But do not yield
an inch of ground to my mother; she will crush any one who gives
up to her, but she will admire the courage of whoever resists her.
She is like iron, which if beaten, can be fused with iron, but
when cold will break everything less hard than itself. Cultivate
my mother; for if she thinks well of you she will introduce you
into certain houses where you can acquire the fatal science of the
world, the art of listening, speaking, answering, presenting
yourself to the company and taking leave of it; the precise use of
language, the something — how shall I explain it? — which is no more
superiority than the coat is the man, but without which the
highest talent in the world will never be admitted within those
portals.
I know you well enough to be quite sure I indulge no illusion when
I imagine that I see you as I wish you to be; simple in manners,
gentle in tone, proud without conceit, respectful to the old,
courteous without servility, above all, discreet. Use your wit but
never display it for the amusement of others; for be sure that if
your brilliancy annoys an inferior man, he will retire from the
field and say of you in a tone of contempt, “He is very amusing.”
Let your superiority be leonine. Moreover, do not be always
seeking to please others. I advise a certain coldness in your
relations with men, which may even amount to indifference; this
will not anger others, for all persons esteem those who slight
them; and it will win you the favor of women, who will respect you
for the little consequence that you attach to men. Never remain in
company with those who have lost their reputation, even though
they may not have deserved to do so; for society holds us
responsible for our friendships as well as for our enmities. In
this matter let your judgments be slowly and maturely weighed, but
see that they are irrevocable. When the men whom you have repulsed
justify the repulsion, your esteem and regard w
ill be all the more
sought after; you have inspired the tacit respect which raises a
man among his peers. I behold you now armed with a youth that
pleases, grace which attracts, and wisdom with which to preserve
your conquests. All that I have now told you can be summed up in
two words, two old-fashioned words, “Noblesse oblige.”
Now apply these precepts to the management of life. You will hear
many persons say that strategy is the chief element of success;
that the best way to press through the crowd is to set some men
against other men and so take their places. That was a good system
for the Middle Ages, when princes had to destroy their rivals by
pitting one against the other; but in these days, all things being
done in open day, I am afraid it would do you ill-service. No, you
must meet your competitors face to face, be they loyal and true
men, or traitorous enemies whose weapons are calumny,
evil-speaking, and fraud. But remember this, you have no more
powerful auxiliaries than these men themselves; they are their own
enemies; fight them with honest weapons, and sooner or later they
are condemned. As to the first of them, loyal men and true, your
straightforwardness will obtain their respect, and the differences
between you once settled (for all things can be settled), these
men will serve you. Do not be afraid of making enemies; woe to him
who has none in the world you are about to enter; but try to give
no handle for ridicule or disparagement. I say try, for in Paris a
man cannot always belong solely to himself; he is sometimes at the
mercy of circumstances; you will not always be able to avoid the
mud in the gutter nor the tile that falls from the roof. The moral
world has gutters where persons of no reputation endeavor to
splash the mud in which they live upon men of honor. But you can
always compel respect by showing that you are, under all
circumstances, immovable in your principles. In the conflict of
opinions, in the midst of quarrels and cross-purposes, go straight
to the point, keep resolutely to the question; never fight except
for the essential thing, and put your whole strength into that.
You know how Monsieur de Mortsauf hates Napoleon, how he curses
him and pursues him as justice does a criminal; demanding
punishment day and night for the death of the Duc d’Enghien, the
only death, the only misfortune, that ever brought the tears to
his eyes; well, he nevertheless admired him as the greatest of
captains, and has often explained to me his strategy. May not the
same tactics be applied to the war of human interests; they would
economize time as heretofore they economized men and space. Think
this over, for as a woman I am liable to be mistaken on such
points which my sex judges only by instinct and sentiment. One
point, however, I may insist on; all trickery, all deception, is
certain to be discovered and to result in doing harm; whereas
every situation presents less danger if a man plants himself
firmly on his own truthfulness. If I may cite my own case, I can
tell you that, obliged as I am by Monsieur de Mortsauf’s condition
to avoid litigation and to bring to an immediate settlement all
difficulties which arise in the management of Clochegourde, and
which would otherwise cause him an excitement under which his mind
would succumb, I have invariably settled matters promptly by
taking hold of the knot of the difficulty and saying to our
opponents: “We will either untie it or cut it!”
It will often happen that you do a service to others and find
yourself ill-rewarded; I beg you not to imitate those who complain
of men and declare them to be all ungrateful. That is putting
themselves on a pedestal indeed! and surely it is somewhat silly
to admit their lack of knowledge of the world. But you, I trust,
will not do good as a usurer lends his money; you will do it — will
you not? — for good’s sake. Noblesse oblige. Nevertheless, do not
bestow such services as to force others to ingratitude, for if you
do, they will become your most implacable enemies; obligations
sometimes lead to despair, like the despair of ruin itself, which
is capable of very desperate efforts. As for yourself, accept as
little as you can from others. Be no man’s vassal; and bring
yourself out of your own difficulties.
You see, dear friend, I am advising you only on the lesser points
of life. In the world of politics things wear a different aspect;
the rules which are to guide your individual steps give way before
the national interests. If you reach that sphere where great men
revolve you will be, like God himself, the sole arbiter of your
determinations. You will no longer be a man, but law, the living
law; no longer an individual, you are then the Nation incarnate.
But remember this, though you judge, you will yourself be judged;
hereafter you will be summoned before the ages, and you know
history well enough to be fully informed as to what deeds and what
sentiments have led to true grandeur.
I now come to a serious matter, your conduct towards women.
Wherever you visit make it a principle not to fritter yourself
away in a petty round of gallantry. A man of the last century who
had great social success never paid attention to more than one
woman of an evening, choosing the one who seemed the most
neglected. That man, my dear child, controlled his epoch. He
wisely reckoned that by a given time all women would speak well of
him. Many young men waste their most precious possession, namely,
the time necessary to create connections which contribute more
than all else to social success. Your springtime is short,
endeavor to make the most of it. Cultivate influential women.
Influential women are old women; they will teach you the
intermarriages and the secrets of all the families of the great
world; they will show you the cross-roads which will bring you
soonest to your goal. They will be fond of you. The bestowal of
protection is their last form of love — when they are not devout.
They will do you innumerable good services; sing your praises and
make you desirable to society. Avoid young women. Do not think I
say this from personal self-interest. The woman of fifty will do
all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your
whole life while the other asks only a few attentions. Laugh with
the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable
of serious thought. Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain,
petty, ignorant of true friendship; they love no one but
themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening’s success.
Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present
situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two
irreconcilable needs! None of these young women would enter into
your interests; they would think of themselves and not of you;
they would injure you more by their emptiness and frivolity than
they could serve you by their love; they will wast
e your time
unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by
destroying your future with the best grace possible. If you
complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove
is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as
to be her slave. They will all tell you that they bestow
happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.
Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great
career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness
they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which
they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be
eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the
words, “I no longer love you,” are a full justification of their
conduct, just as the words, “I love,” justified their winning you;
they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.
Absurd! Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always
like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent
demonstration; white hair often covers the head but the heart that
holds it is ever young. No such love is found among the women of
the world; all are playing comedy; this one will interest you by
her misfortunes; she seems the gentlest and least exacting of her
sex, but when once she is necessary to you, you will feel the
tyranny of weakness and will do her will; you may wish to be a
diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests, — no, you
must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her
petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and
exacting she will be. Another will attract you by her
submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you
romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the
millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but
the woman will come to the surface.
The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets.
The silliest triumph because too foolish to excite distrust. The
one to be feared least may be the woman of gallantry whom you love
without exactly knowing why; she will leave you for no motive and
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1080