New Dialogues of the Dead
To Lucian,
In the Elysian Fields.
Illustrious man,
After having taken the idea of these dialogues from you, it is very just that I give you some homage. The author who has taught us most is the proper person to dedicate our work to; we can praise him sincerely and his example protects us. Someone may think that I was very bold to compete with you in a genre that you invented, but it seems to me that I would have been much bolder if I worked without a model. My hope is that your genre will make my ideas bearable; and I dare say that if my dialogues have some small success, they will do you even more honor than your own, since people will see that the idea was so pleasant that it didn't even have to be carried out well to delight them. I have built so much on your dialogues that only a portion of them would have been enough for me. I have left out Pluto, Charon, Cerberus, and the usual creatures in Hades. How angry I am that you exhausted the charming topics of the equality of the dead, the regret that some had for things in their life, the insincere firmness that philosophers affect when they die, the absurd misfortune of young people who die before the people they were hoping to inherit money from, and who they slaved over! But after all, since you invented these dialogues, it is reasonable that you got to choose the most charming topics. I have at least tried to imitate the goal that you proposed. All of your dialogues contain a moral, and I have made all of my dead people speak about morals; otherwise it would not have been worth the trouble of making them talk; living people would have been sufficient for saying things that are useless. Moreover, there is the convenience that one can imagine that the dead are people of great reflection, as much because of their experience as because of their leisure; and to their honor, one must believe that the dead think a little more than people usually do in life. They reason better than us up here because they regard things with more indifference and tranquility, and they want to reason about things because they don't have any self-interest. You made most of your dialogues so short that it seems you didn't think the dead were big talkers, and I easily agree with you. Since the dead are very insightful, they must quickly see to the bottom of a topic. I would even believe that they are so clear-sighted as to always agree with each other, and consequently hardly ever speak; because it seems to me that arguing belongs to us ignorant people who don’t know the truth, just as it belongs to blind people who do not know where they are going to bump into each other. But it would be hard to persuade oneself that the dead have changed their characters so much that they no longer feel differently from each other. Once someone in the world forms an idea of other people, he hardly ever changes it. Thus, I decided to make my dead people recognizable, at least the ones who are well known. You had no problem inventing characters and perhaps also some of the experiences your characters had, but I didn't need to do this. History furnished me with enough real dead people and true experiences for me not to have to invent them. You won't be surprised that dead people talk about things that happened long after their time; you who see yourself that everyday new dead people arrive to inform the old ones. I am sure that at present you know France very well through an infinite number of reports you have heard about it, and that you know that today France is to letters what Greece used to be. Above all, your illustrious translator, who made you speak our language so well, has surely not failed to tell you that Paris currently enjoys your works as much as Rome and Athens used to. Happy whoever can take your style as this great man did, and trap in his translation your delicate simplicity and your naive playfulness, which are so appropriate to dialogues! For myself, I cannot claim to have the glory of imitating you well; and I only want the glory of having known that one cannot imitate a more excellent model than you.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD ANCIENTS
Dialogue I
What type of people cause the most stir in the world
Alexander the Great, Phryne
Phryne
You can ask all of the Thebans who were alive when I was. They will tell you that I offered to rebuild the Walls of Thebes that you ruined at my own expense, provided that they write this inscription on them: 'Alexander the Great knocked these walls down, but the Courtesan Phryne rebuilt them'.
Alexander
Then you were afraid that posterity wouldn't know that you were a courtesan?
Phryne
I really excelled as one; and every extraordinary person, whatever his or her profession may be, goes crazy over monuments and inscriptions.
Alexander
It's true that Rhodope had already done the same thing. The money she made from with her beauty allowed her to build one of those Egyptian pyramids that are still standing; and the other day I remember her talking to certain dead French women who claimed that they were very beautiful, and who began crying, saying that in the country and century they lived in, beautiful women couldn't make large enough fortunes to build pyramids.
Phryne
But I had this advantage over Rhodope, that by rebuilding the Walls of Thebes I put myself on a par with you, who were the greatest conqueror in the world, and I showed that my beauty could repair the destruction caused by your valor.
Alexander
We would certainly never enter into a comparison. Are you that proud of having pleased so many men?
Phryne
And you, are you that satisfied with having destroyed the better part of the world? Too bad there wasn't a Phryne in every city you ruined! There would no longer be any sign of your violence.
Alexander
If I could live again, I would still choose to be a famous conqueror.
Phryne
And I a beautiful conqueress. Men naturally obey beauty, and valor only forces them against their will. Beauty has more power over them than force. To better convince you, your father Phillip was very valiant, and you were too; however, neither of you could inspire any fear in the orator Demosthenes, who spent his whole life haranguing against you both; meanwhile another Phryne than I (because the name was lucky) was on the verge of losing a very important trial, when her lawyer, having exhausted all his eloquence for her, ripped open the part of her dress that covered her breasts, and immediately her beauty was seen, and the judges who were ready to condemn her changed their minds. Thus, the entire stir caused by you weapons over a long series of years couldn't keep an orator quiet, but the qualities of someone who was beautiful corrupted the severe Areopagus in a single moment.
Alexander
Despite the example of this other Phryne, I do not think that Alexander the Great was less powerful. It would be a great pity if...
Phryne
I know what you're going to say. Greece, Asia, Persia, India, all that was a great display. However, if I took away what wasn't due to you; if I gave your soldiers, captains, and chance itself what belonged to them, do you think that you would have nearly as much glory? However, a beauty doesn't share the honor of her conquests with anyone; she owes everything to herself. Believe me, it's a pretty situation to be a beautiful woman.
Alexander
It seems that you're very convinced. But do you think that courtesans are really as powerful as you were?
Phryne
No, no, that's true. I admit that I went far, far beyond a typical beautiful woman, but you also went far, far beyond a typical great man. You and I made too many conquests. If I had only had two or three lovers, that would have been in order and there would be nothing to criticize; but to have had enough to rebuild the Walls of Thebes, that's doing much more than is necessary. On the other hand, if you had only conquered Greece, the neighboring islands, and maybe a small part of Asia Minor, and created a State, nothing would have been more understandable or reasonable; but to always run about without knowing where, to always capture cities without knowing why, and to always execute something without having any plan, that is what hasn't pleased people who have good sense.
Alexander
Let those sensible people say what they like. If I had used my valor and fortune that wisely, nearly no one would speak about me.
Phryne
Nor about me, if I had used my beauty so wisely. When someone only wants to cause a stir in the world, the proper type of personality isn't one that is very reasonable.
Dialogue II
On being sensitive
Milon, Smindiride
Smindiride
So you really are proud, Milon, of having carried a cow on your shoulders to the Olympic Games and eating the whole thing in one day?
Milon
It was doubtlessly beautiful. All Greece praised me, and honor even spread to my country Croton, from which an infinite number of brave athletes have come. On the other hand, your city Sibaris will always be derided for the softness of it's inhabitants, who banished roosters for fear that they would be woken up, and who ask people to eat for a year before dinner is served, in order to have time to make it as delicately as they want.
Smindiride
You mock Sibarites; but you, coarse Crotonate, don't you think that eating a cow in one day makes you resemble it somewhat?
Milon
And you, do you resemble a man, when you are unable to sleep at night because among the rose petals that are sprinkled over your bed, there was one that you accidentally ripped in two?
Smindiride
It's true that I was so sensitive, but why does that seem so strange to you?
Milon
How could it not seem strange to me?
Smindiride
What, have you never seen a lover who was covered with favors from his mistress, for whom he had done some service, be troubled on account of her happiness, worrying that it was only gratitude and not affection that was in the heart of his beauty?
Milon
No, I've never seen it. But what of it?
Smindiride
And have you never heard the speech of some conqueror who just returned from a glorious expedition, finding himself little satisfied with his triumphs because fortune had too much a part in them as opposed to his valor and conduct, his designs having succeeded on false measures and bad impressions?
Milon
No, I've never heard such speech. But again, what do you want to conclude?
Smindiride
That this lover, and this conqueror, and in general nearly all men who bed themselves on flowers are not able to sleep if there is a single petal ripped in two. Nothing is necessary to take pleasure in things. This is the bed of roses, where it is very difficult for all the petals to stay together without any being ripped; meanwhile, a tear in a single one is enough to hurt us very much.
Milon
I'm not very knowledgeable on the matter, but it seems to me that you, and the lover, and the conqueror that you mentioned, and everyone like them, have something wrong with them. Why make yourselves so sensitive?
Smindiride
Ah, Milon! People with a spirit are not Crotonates like you, but are Sibarites more refined than me.
Milon
I see it all now. People who have a spirit also doubtlessly have more pleasures than they need, and they become sensitive to reduce what they have too much of. They want to be sensitive to the smallest discomforts because they are too comfortable, and in this I think they are right.
Smindiride
That's not how it is at all. People who have a spirit never have more pleasures than they need.
Milon
Then they are fools to become so sensitive.
Smindiride
That’s the unfortunate thing. Sensitivity is entirely worthy of men; it is only produced by good qualities, by their spirit and heart; they are grateful for having these and try to acquire them if they don't; meanwhile being sensitive lessens a person's pleasures, and one doesn't have too many. It's the reason that people are not always quick to see their pleasures, which are not too quick in coming. How men are to be pitied! Their natural condition offers only a few pleasant things, and their reason teaches them to enjoy fewer.
Dialogue III
On the affair that Virgil falsely attributed to Dido
Dido, Stratonice
Dido
Alas! My poor Stratonice, how unfortunate I am! You know how I lived. I was so faithful to my first husband that I burned myself alive to avoid taking a second. However, I have not been able to escape slander. It pleased a poet named Virgil to change a prude as severe as myself into a young coquette who let herself be charmed by the handsome face of a foreigner on the first day that she saw him. My whole story was reversed. It's true that he kept in my funeral pyre. But can you guess why he said I threw myself into it? Not out of fear of having to take a second husband, but out of despair that this foreigner abandoned me.
Stratonice
In good faith, this can have very dangerous consequences. There will hardly be any more women who will want to burn themselves out of conjugal fidelity, if after they are dead a poet has the liberty to say anything he wants to about them. But perhaps your Virgil wasn't so incorrect. Perhaps he uncovered an affair that you had when you were alive that you hoped wouldn't be discovered. What do I know? I cannot respond for you simply on the basis of your funeral pyre.
Dido
If the gallantry that Virgil attributed to me had any resemblance to truth, I would consent to being suspected; but he said that my lover was Aeneas, a man who died three hundred years before I came into the world.
Stratonice
Now that's something. However, Aeneas and you both seemed extremely suited to one another. You both were forced to abandon your homelands; you both sought your fortune in a foreign country; he was a widower, you a widow; that's a lot of similarities. It's true that you were born three hundred years after him; but Virgil saw so many reasons to place you together, that he didn't think the three hundred years that separated you were a great concern.
Dido
What kind of argument is that? What, three hundred years is not always three hundred years, and despite this obstacle, two people can still meet and love each other?
Stratonice
Oh! On this point Virgil was very subtle. He was definitely a man of the world. He wanted to show that in love affairs, one mustn’t judge according to appearances, and that the people who show the least signs of one are often the most involved.
Dido
I think that he just attacked my reputation in order to put a beautiful episode into his work.
Stratonice
What, though? Would you ridicule him? Did you just mean something impertinent?
Dido
Not at all. He recited his poem to me down here, and the whole bit where I appear is definitely divine, even the slander. I am beautiful in it, I say very beautiful things about my supposed passion; and if Virgil were obliged to represent me in the Aeneid as an honest woman, the Aeneid would lose a great deal.
Stratonice
Then what are you complaining about? He attributed an affair to you that you didn't have; a great misfortune! But in recompense, he gave you beauty and esprit, which you may not have had.
Dido
What a consolation!
Stratonice
I know what you are like, but it seems to me that most women prefer that people slander their virtue a little, rather than their esprit or their beauty. As for myself, I was of this last humor. A painter who was at the court of my husband, the King of Syria, was unhappy with me; and to avenge himself, he painted me in the arms of a soldier. He exposed his painting and immediately fled. My subjects, zealous about my glory, wanted to publicly burn this painting; but since I was painted admirably well, and was very beautiful, although the attitudes people showed me were not advantageous to my virtue, I kept it from being burned, and recalled the painter, whom I pardoned. If you would trust me, you would do the same with respect to Virgil.
Dido
That would be good, if the greatest merit of a woman was to be beautiful or to have esprit.
Stratonice
I won't decide at all what her greatest merit is, but as far as what usually happens is concerned, the first question that people ask about a woman that they don't know is, 'Is she beautiful?' The second is, 'Does she have esprit?' It rarely happens that they ask a third question.
Dialogue IV
On Philosophy
Anacreon, Aristotle
Aristotle
I would never have believed that a writer of chansons would have dared to compare himself with a philosopher of as great a reputation as myself.
Anacreon
You do make the name of philosophy ring on high. I however, with my little chansons, have never left off being called the wise Anacreon, and it seems to me that being a philosopher is not worth as much as being wise.
Aristotle
Those who attribute that quality to you don't think too much before they speak. What have you ever done to merit it?
Anacreon
All I have done is sing, and dance, and be full of love; and the marvelous thing is that people have called me wise at this price, while they only call you a philosopher, who have taken infinite pains. For, how many nights haven't you passed in poking holes in the ticklish questions of dialectics? How many huge volumes haven't you composed on obscure subjects that you may not even understand yourself?
Aristotle
I admit that you have taken a more comfortable path to wisdom, and that it took a lot of cleverness to find a way to acquire more glory with your lute and bottle than great men do with their years and travails.
Anacreon
You make fun of me; but I maintain that it is more difficult to drink and sing as I have done, than to philosophize as you have. To sing and drink like me, it is necessary to free a soul from violent passions, to only aspire to what depends on oneself, to be disposed to take all time as it comes; finally, there are all the little things of life to consider that weren't previously. If there is not any great dialectic in all this, it is nevertheless only with difficulty that someone could achieve it without being exhausted. But it takes less to be a philosopher as you have been. One is not obliged to give up ambition or avarice; makes oneself an agreeable entrance into the court of Alexander the Great, acquires presents of five hundred thousand ecus, which are not spent entirely on physical experiments as intended by the donator; and in a word, this sort of philosophy leads to things sufficiently opposed to philosophy.
Aristotle
You must have heard a lot of slander about me in the underworld here; but after all, man is only man because he reasons, and nothing is more beautiful than to teach others how to study nature, and to look into all the enigmas that she poses us.
Anacreon
Observe how men reverse the use of everything. Philosophy is in itself an admirable thing and can be very useful; but because it is inconvenient when it mixes in people's affairs, and advises them to rule their passions, they start looking into how the planets are arranged in the sky, measuring their movements, or even walking all over the earth to examine everything they see there. Finally, they occupy themselves with the farthest thing from them as possible. But while they want to be philosophers so cheaply, they empty the name, and call people by it who only look into natural causes.
Aristotle
And what name is more fitting to give them?
Anacreon
The philosopher's only affair is with men, and not at all with the rest of the universe. An astronomer thinks about stars, a physicist thinks about nature, and a philosopher thinks about himself. But who would want to be in such a hard condition? Alas! Nearly no one. One therefore doesn't require philosophers to be philosophers and is content if they are astronomers or physicists. For myself, I have never been in the mood to make speculations, but I'm sure that there is less philosophy in a lot of books with the title, than in some of these little chansons that you scorn so much; in this one for example.
If gold would prolong life,
I would have no other concern,
Than to amass gold.
Death would visit me,
I would send him away quickly,
By giving him my treasure;
But if strict fate
Won't allow it thus,
Gold is no longer necessary for me;
Love and good friends
Will be my concern.
Aristotle
If you only call philosophy what deals with mores, there are things in my morals works that are just as good as your chanson; because, at least, the obscurity that people reproach me with, and which may in fact be in some of my books, isn't in the ones I wrote on this subject; and everyone admits that nothing is more beautiful or clear than what I say about the passions.
Anacreon
What an abuse! It is not a question of methodically defining passions, which is what people say that you've done, but of overcoming them. Men willingly hand over their faults to be considered by philosophy, but not to be corrected; and some people have found the secret of morality without having lived closer to it than astronomy does. Can a person keep from laughing, seeing people who, for money, teach contempt for riches, and cowards who fight over the definition of magnanimity?
Dialogue V
On the mysteries in the works of Homer
Homer, Aesop
Homer
In truth, all the fables that you just recited for me cannot be admired enough. You needed very much art to disguise the most important instructions of morality behind little stories, and to cover your thoughts in such just and familiar images.
Aesop
It is very sweet for me to be praised by you, who understood the art of disguising one's thoughts so well.
Homer
Me? I never prided myself on that.
Aesop
What, didn't you claim to hide great mysteries in your works?
Homer
Alas! Not at all.
Aesop
And yet, all of the scholars of my age said that the Iliad and Odyssey were everywhere full of the most beautiful allegories in the world. They claimed that all of the secrets of theology, physics, morality, and even mathematics were hidden in the books you wrote. It's true that it was difficult for them to figure the allegories out; where one found a moral message, another found a message about physics; but even with all this, they agreed that you knew everything and even said it, if only someone could figure it out.
Homer
Without lying, I suspected that certain people would understand subtleties that I never intended. Just as there is nothing like prophesying distant affairs before they happen, there is also nothing like taking apart stories and looking for hidden meanings.
Aesop
It was very bold of you to leave it to your readers to put hidden meanings in your poems. Where would you be now if people only took them for what they say?
Homer
That wouldn’t have brought me much misfortune.
Aesop
What? Gods who cripple each other; a thunderbolt-hurling Jupiter who in an assembly of divinities threatens the august Juno with a beating; a Mars who, when hurt by Diomedes, cries, you say, like nine or ten thousand men, and doesn’t even act like one (because, instead of destroying all the Greeks, he decides to complain about his wounds to Jupiter), all this would be good without hidden meanings?
Homer
Why not? You think that the human spirit only looks for what is true; disillusion yourself. The human spirit and falseness have extremely close ties. If you are going to speak the truth, you do very well to disguise it in fables, it becomes much more pleasing. If you just want to tell stories, they can please people very much without containing any truth. Thus, true things need to seem like they are false to be happily received by the human spirit; but false things enter it just as they are, because the human spirit was born from them and is usually occupied with them, and the truth is strange to it. I will tell you more. When I tried very hard to give a story hidden meaning, many people took the story just as it was, and never imagined it could have been allegorical; and so you are able to see that my gods, such as they are, and without any hidden meanings, would not be found ridiculous at all.
Aesop
That makes me tremble. I am horribly afraid that people will think that animals actually spoke like they do in my stories.
Homer
That’s an amusing apprehension.
Aesop
What, if people could easily believe that the gods were able to talk in the way that you said they did, why wouldn’t they believe that animals spoke in the way I said they did?
Homer
Ah! It’s not the same thing. Men would really like the gods to be as foolish as they are, but they don’t want animals to be as wise.
Dialogue VI
On the bizarreness of fortune
Athenais, Icasie
Icasie
Since you want to know what happened to me, here it is. The Emperor I was living under wanted to get married; and to better choose an Empress, he let it be known that anyone who thought she was beautiful and pleasant enough to claim the throne should come to Constantinople. God knows how many people came. I went, and I had no doubt that being in my first youth, with very lively eyes, and a very pleasant and subtle air, I would win the Empire. The day that they held the assembly of so many pretty women, we all looked at each other's faces with anxiety; and I noticed with pleasure that my rivals looked at me with malicious envy. The Emperor appeared. At first, he passed by many rows of beautiful women without saying anything; but when he came to me, my eyes served me well, and he stopped. 'In truth', he told me, looking at me in the way that I had hoped, 'women are very dangerous; they could accomplish a lot of evil.' I thought that all I had to do was show him that I had esprit, and that I would be Empress; and in the throng of hope and joy that I was in, I made an effort to respond. 'In recompense, Seigneur, women can do, and have sometimes done very much good.' This response spoiled everything. The Emperor found it too spiritual, and he didn't dare marry me.
Athenais
That Emperor must have had a very strange character, to fear esprit so much that he thought your response had too much; because frankly, it wasn't very good, and you don't have much to reproach yourself for.
Icasie
Thus goes fortune. Esprit alone made you Empress; and as for me, the simple appearance of it kept the Empire from me. You even knew philosophy, which is much worse than having esprit; and for all that, you were still able to marry the young Theodosius.
Athenais
If I had had your example before my eyes, I would have been very afraid. After my father made a very knowledgeable and spiritual girl of me, he disinherited me, so much did he believe that my knowledge and wit would not fail to make me a fortune, and to tell you the truth, I believed the same. But now I see that I was running a great chance, and that it was very possible that I could have been left fortuneless and with nothing but philosophy.
Icasie
Very possibly; but luckily for you, my example had not yet been made. It would be pretty amusing if someone found herself in a similar situation as me after having read my story, and wanting to profit from it, had the subtlety not to give any impression of esprit, and if the only result was that people made fun of her.
Athenais
I don't want to say whether I think that that plan would have worked for her or not; but very often, people do foolish things by chance that turn out to be the most fortunate things in the world. Haven't you heard of that painter who had painted grapes so well that the birds were tricked and began to peck at them? Judge how much of a reputation he made by that. But the grapes were being held by a little peasant in the painting; and people said to the painter that in all honesty, he had painted the grapes very well since they had attracted the birds; but that he had painted the peasant very badly since the birds weren't afraid of him. They were right. However, if the painted had not forgotten himself when painting that little peasant, the grapes would not have had the prodigious success that they did.
Icasie
In truth, whatever people do in the world, they do not realize what they are doing; and after the example of that painter, people must even tremble in the affairs that they conduct themselves well in, and fear not having done something wrong that would have been necessary. Everything is uncertain. It seems that fortune takes care to give varying success to the same action, so that she can always make fun of human reason, which has no certain guide.
DIALOGUES
OF DEAD ANCIENTS
AND MODERNS
Dialogue I
On praises
Augustus, Pietro Aretino
P. Aretino
Yes, I was a wit in my century, and I made a considerable fortune off of princes.
Augustus
Then you composed a lot of works praising them?
P. Aretino
Not at all. I had a pension from all the princes of Europe, and that would never have happened if I amused myself with praising them. They were at war with each other; when some were attacking, others were being attacked; and there was no way to sing praises to them all.
Augustus
Then what did you do?
P. Aretino
I made verses satirizing them. They couldn't all be put into a panegyric; but they all fit well into a satire. Terror of my name spread so quickly that they paid me not to immortalize their follies. The emperor Charles V, who you've surely heard of down here, went to fight on the coasts of Africa so inappropriately that he immediately sent me a pretty golden chain. I received it and looked at it sadly; 'Ah! That's very little", I said, "for as great a folly as he committed."
Augustus
You've found a new way to get money from princes.
P. Aretino
Didn't I have reason to hope for a enormous fortune, by founding my revenue on other people's folly? That's a good foundation; and it always pays well.
Augustus
Whatever you may say, it is safer, and consequently better, to praise people.
P. Aretino
What would you have? I wasn't impudent enough to praise people.
Augustus
And you were impudent enough to make satires on kings?
P. Aretino
It isn't the same thing. To make satires, it isn't always necessary to scorn the people you're making them against; but to give certain tasteless and outrageous praises, it seems to me that you have to have some contempt for the people you're giving them to, and think that they are real dupes. What impudence Virgil had to tell you that people weren't sure if you were a man or a god, or whether you would continue to be in charge of the earth or become a sea god by marrying a daughter of Thetis, who would have willingly sold all her waters for the honor of being your mother-in-law, or finally whether you would in the end be lodged in the heavens next to the scorpion, who took up the place of two signs, and who out of consideration for you would move to the right!
Augustus
Don't be surprised that Virgil had that impudence. When a person is praised, he doesn't examine what he is told very rigorously; he helps the flatterer figure out what he means; and any modesty in the praise itself is at once made up for by the vanity of the person being addressed. Often a person believes that he merits praises that aren't given to him; how could he then believe that he doesn't merit the praises that are given to him?
P. Aretino
Then you believed what Virgil said, that you would either marry a sea nymph or have an apartment in the zodiac?
Augustus
No, no. A person lowers those sorts of praises a little, to reduce them to something a bit more reasonable; but actually, he hardly lowers them at all, and he finds that he was very well evaluated. In the end, however outrageously a person may be praised, he always enjoys believing that he is above ordinary praise and that his merit has driven people beyond all limits. Vanity has many resources.
P. Aretino
I see clearly how there isn't any difficulty in praising people excessively; but at least, how can you be so bold as to give them to princes who fight with each other? I bet, for example, that when you pitilessly revenged yourself on your enemies, there was nothingmore glorious in your court than to say how fearful it would be to be opposed to you, but as soon as you did something gentle, people changed their tone and said that there was nothing in vengeance but a barbarous and inhuman glory. People would praise one part of your life at the expense of the other. If it were me, I would be afraid that you would actually listen to me and say, "Choose either severity or mercy to depict the true character of a hero; but after that, stick to what you said."
Augustus
Why do you want people to look into it so closely? It's advantageous to rulers that everything can be a subject of flattery. Whatever they do, they can't fail to be praised; and if they are praised for opposite things, it's because they have more than one type of merit.
P. Aretino
But what? Would you have no scruples over the praises that people covered you with? Does it require a lot of subtlety to see that they are only attached to your rank? Praises do not distinguish princes at all; they aren't given to heroes any more than to others; but posterity distinguishes the praises that were given to different princes. It confirms some and declares that others were vile flattery.
Augustus
Then you will at least agree that I merited the praises I received, since posterity has definitely agreed with them. I even have something to complain about over it, because posterity is usually so accustomed to regard me as the model for princes, that it praises others by comparing them with me, and often the comparison does me wrong.
P. Aretino
Console yourself: people won't do that anymore. In the same way that all the dead people down here talk about Louis XIV who rules today in France, people will use him as the model for princes, and I predict that in the future, people will not be able to give any more powerful praise than by comparing someone in some way with this great king.
Augustus
Well so? Don't you think that the people who are told such big exaggerations will listen to them with pleasure?
P. Aretino
That may be. People are so avid for praises, that they dispense with justice, truth, and all the things that should accompany them.
Augustus
It very much seems that you would like to do away with praises. Who would praise other people, if they deserved it?
P. Aretino
Everyone who would do so without self-interest. It only belongs to them to praise. How come your Virgil praised Cato so fittingly, by saying that he presided over the assembly of many good people, who were separated from others in the Elysian Fields? It's because Cato was dead; Virgil, who didn't hope for anything from him or his family, only devoted a single verse to him and limited his praise to a reasonable thought. How come he praised you so tastelessly and verbosely at the beginning of his Georgics? He was receiving a pension from you.
Augustus
Then I lost a lot of money spent on my praises?
P. Aretino
It upsets me. Why didn't you do the same as one of your successors, who immediately after he became master of the empire set up an explicit edict that forbade anyone from writing verses in praise of him?
Augustus
Alas! He had more sense than I did. True praises are not those that people freely offer to us, but those that we receive despite their desire not to give them.
Dialogue II
If it is for the best that men attack and women defend
Sappho, Laura
Laura
It is true that the Muses took a part in both of our passions, and added many ornaments to them; but there is this difference, that you sang about your lovers; and I was sung about by mine.
Sappho
And so? That means that I loved as much as you were loved.
Laura
That's not what I'm surprised about, because I know that women are usually tenderer than men. What surprises me is that you revealed everything you felt to the people you loved and that in a way you set siege to their hearts with your poems. It is only proper for a woman to defend herself.
Sappho
Between ourselves, I'm a little angry about that; that's an injustice that men do us. They've taken the role of attacking, which is much easier than defending oneself.
Laura
Don't complain at all, our role has it's advantages. We who defend can give ourselves anytime it pleases us; but those who attack do not always succeed when they really want to.
Sappho
You forget to mention that when men attack us, they are doing what they want to do, but when we defend ourselves, it's sometimes not what we want to do.
Laura
Do you count for nothing the pleasure of seeing so many sweet attacks continued for so long, and often redoubled, showing how much they value the conquest of your heart?
Sappho
And do you count for nothing the pain of resisting these sweet attacks? They see the success they are making with pleasure; and we would be very angry if our resistance had absolutely no success.
Laura
But in the end, although after all their cares they are victorious with good reason, you show them grace by recognizing that they are. You can no longer resist, and they leave it for you to yield what you can no longer defend.
Sappho
Ah! That doesn't prevent it from being a victory for them, and a defeat for us. In the pleasure of being loved, they only enjoy triumphing over the person they love; and the happy lover is only happy because he is a conqueror.
Laura
What? Would you rather that women attack men?
Sappho
And what need is there for one of them to attack the other? Let them love each other from both sides as much as their hearts dictate.
Laura
Oh! Things would go by too fast, and love is such an agreeable occupation that one does well to make it last as long as possible. What would happen if a person was yielded to as soon as he offered himself? What would become of all the cares that people take to please each other; all the anxieties that they feel when they are reproached with not being pleasant enough; all the impatience with which they wait for a happy moment, finally all the pleasant mixture of pleasure and pain that people call love? Nothing would be more insipid than people just loving each other.
Sappho
Well so, if love has to be a sort of combat, I would rather men be the ones on the defensive. Didn't you already tell me that women are more inclined to tenderness? Therefore, they would attack better.
Laura
Yes, but men would defend themselves too well. When one wants one sex to resist, one only wants them to resist as much as would make the victory of the attacker pleasant, but not enough to actually succeed. They mustn’t be so weak as to give themselves up right off, nor so strong as never to do so. Our character suits that, and it may be that mans does not. Believe me, after a person has reasoned well either about love, or about anything else, he finds at the end of his accounting that things are well as they are, and that the reform that he wanted to make would ruin everything.
Dialogue III
On whether the ancients had more virtue than us
Socrates, Montaigne
Montaigne
Then it's really you, the divine Socrates! What a joy it is to see you! I immediately came to the underworld here, and began looking for you from the first. At last, after filling my book with your name and praises, I can talk with you and learn how you had such naive and charming virtue, which was so natural and without example, even in the happy times you lived in.
Socrates
I'm very content to see someone arrive here who was a philosopher, but since you just came from the world above, and since it's been a long time since I've seen anyone, (because people leave me alone and there's not a big demand for my company), don't take it ill that I ask for some news. How goes the world? Has it changed a lot?
Montaigne
Extremely. You wouldn't recognize it.
Socrates
I'm so glad. I always doubted myself when I thought that it would become better and wiser than it was in my time.
Montaigne
What do you mean? It is more foolish and corrupt than it has ever been. That's the type of change I meant, and I would love to learn from you the history of the times you saw, when so much honesty and right action reigned.
Socrates
And I, on the contrary, would love to learn the marvels of the century you lived in. What? The men that live now haven't corrected any of the foolishnesses of antiquity?
Montaigne
I think it's because you are an ancient that you speak so familiarly of antiquity; but know that it's a common theme to miss their mores, and day to day, everything about them.
Socrates
Can it be? It seems to me that in my time things were in a bad way. I thought that in the end at least they would take a reasonable course, and that men would profit from the experience of so many years.
Montaigne
And what are experiences to men? They are like birds that always get caught in the same net where a hundred thousand birds of the same species were already taken. No one enters life completely new, and the mistakes of fathers are lost to their sons.
Socrates
But how not learn from experiences? I think the world's old age would then be wiser and better ruled than it's youth.
Montaigne
The men of every century have the same bents, which reason has no power over. Thence, wherever there are men, there is folly, and the same folly.
Socrates
And with that being the case, how would you have the centuries of antiquity be worth more than those today?
Montaigne
Ah! Socrates. I know well that you have a particular way of reasoning, and of so adroitly enveloping the people you speak with in an argument that they can't see the conclusion of, that you lead them where you please, and so are called the wise woman of their thoughts, who gives birth to them. I admit that I just came up with a proposition diametrically opposed to my first; even so, I stand to it. It is certain that one no longer finds souls so vigorous and complete as were in antiquity, the Aristides, Phocions, Pericles', and finally Socrates'.
Socrates
How could it be? Has nature been exhausted, and no longer has the strength to make great souls; and why would it be too exhausted only for making men reasonable? All of it's works haven't degenerated; why would only men do so?
Montaigne
It's a point of fact, they're degenerate. It seems that nature gave a sample of great men at other times, to persuade us that she knows how to make them if she wants to, and then made the rest without much attention.
Socrates
Observe something. Antiquity is the object of a particular tendency; distance makes it seem greater. If you knew Aristides, Phocion, Pericles, and me, since you number me with them, you would have found people in your century who resemble us. What usually makes someone so biased toward antiquity is the chagrin they have with their own century, and antiquity profits by it. One puts the ancients much higher to abase one's contemporaries. When we are alive, we esteem our ancestors more than they merited it; and at present, our posterity will esteem us more than we merit it, but both our ancestors, and us, and our posterity are all quite equal, and I think that the spectacle of the world would be very boring for someone who saw it from a certain perspective; because it's always the same thing.
Montaigne
I would have thought that everything is in movement, that everything changes, and that different centuries have different characters just like men do. For, doesn't one find knowledgeable centuries, and others that are ignorant? Aren't some naive and others more refined? Aren't some serious, and others playful, some polite and others vulgar?
Socrates
That's nothing. Clothes change; but that doesn't mean that the body changes too. Politeness or vulgarity, knowledge or ignorance, more or less of a certain naivety, a serious or playful genius, are all only the outside of man, and all of them change; but the heart does not change at all, and all of man is in his heart. Someone is ignorant in this century, but trends change and knowing people come along; someone has self-interest, but the trend for being disinterested will never come. Out of the prodigious number of unreasonable people who are born in a hundred years, nature makes maybe two or three dozen reasonable ones that are spread over the earth, and judge yourself whether that is enough to make a trend of virtue and right action.
Montaigne
This allotment of reasonable men, need it be spread out equally? It's very possible that some centuries have more than others.
Socrates
Nature always acts with measure, but we do not judge her as she acts.
Dialogue IV
Which deaths are the bravest
Emperor Hadrian, Margaret of Austria
M. of Austria
What's wrong? You are all flustered.
Hadrian
I was just in an enormous argument with Cato the Younger about how each of us died. I claimed that I showed myself to be more philosophical than he did.
M. of Austria
I find it very bold for you to compare yourself with as famous a death as his. Wasn't it extremely glorious to have complete power in Utica, to protect all of his friends, and to kill himself in the name of the freedom of his country rather than fall into the hands of a conqueror, even though he would definitely have been pardoned?
Hadrian
Oh! If you were to examine his death closely, you would find many things to correct. First of all, he took so much time over it, and he made such a display of it, that everyone in Utica knew he was going to kill himself. Second, before stabbing himself, he had to read the dialogue of Plato a few times concerning the immortality of the soul. Third, the decision he made put him in such an ill humor that when he went to his room and didn't find his sword hanging from his bedstead (because someone guessed what he was planning to do and took it away), he called for one of his slaves and hit him so hard with his fist that he broke his teeth and bloodied his own hand.
M. of Austria
I admit that such a blow with his fist spoils what would have been a philosophical death.
Hadrian
You couldn't imagine how much noise he made over his stolen sword, and how he reproached his son and servants for wanting to deliver him up to Caesar with his hands and feet tied. In the end, he scolded everyone so bitterly that they were forced to leave his room and let him kill himself.
M. of Austria
It's very true, things could have happened a little more calmly. He could have softly waited until the next day to meet death; nothing is easier than to die when one wants this; but apparently the measures he took to make up for his lack of firmness were taken with so much reason that it was impossible for him to wait, and perhaps he wouldn't have killed himself if he had to wait one more day.
Hadrian
You are speaking the truth, and I see that you are a connoisseur of brave deaths.
M. of Austria
However, people say that when Cato was brought his sword, he retired to his room, went to sleep, and snored. That is very beautiful.
Hadrian
And you believe it? He had just fought with everyone in his house and beat his slaves; people do not sleep so easily after such a thing. Moreover, the hand that he struck the slave gave him too much pain to allow him to sleep, because he couldn't bear it and had a doctor bandage it, even though he was just about to kill himself. Finally, after he was brought his sword and it was midnight, he read the dialogue of Plato two more times. Now, it can definitely be shown that after a large dinner he gave that evening to all of his friends, the walk he took afterward, and everything that happened after he went into his room, that when he finally received his sword it must have been very late; moreover, the dialogue that he read twice was very long, and consequently if he did sleep, it wasn't for very long. Truthfully, I am afraid of the possibility that he faked snoring for his own honor before the people listening at the door.
M. of Austria
You don't critique his death badly, which always had something very heroic about it. But what makes you think that yours was better? As far as I can remember, you died plainly in your bed, in a way that had nothing remarkable about it.
Hadrian
What? Is there nothing remarkable about these verses I wrote when I was nearly on my last breath?
My little soul, my cutie,
You are going away, my girl, and God knows where;
You are leaving alone, naked, and trembling. Alas!
What happened to your frolicsomeness?
What will become of so many pretty excursions I took with you?
Cato treated death too seriously; but you can see that I chatted about it; and that is why I claim that I was more philosophical than he was. It is easier to proudly brave death than to nonchalantly laugh at it, and it is also easier to bear it when it does us honor than when it doesn't do anything for us at all.
M. of Austria
Yes, I agree that Cato's death is less beautiful than yours; but unfortunately, I've never heard of these verses that you made, which give all the beauty to your death.
Hadrian
Such is the world. Cato tears his entrails out rather than fall into his enemies hands; this is perhaps not such a great action, but it shines throughout all history and everyone is struck by it. Someone else dies quietly and is able to write playful verses about death, which is more than Cato did; but this doesn't strike anyone, and there is nearly no record of it in history.
M. of Austria
Alas! Nothing is truer than what you are saying; and as for myself, the very person speaking with you, I died even more beautifully than you did, and people talked about it even less. I didn't die completely, but what happened was superior to your death, which was in turn superior to Cato's.
Hadrian
How? What do you mean?
M. of Austria
I was the daughter of an Emperor. I was engaged to the son of a King, and after his father died, this Prince sent me back home despite the solemn promise his father had given that he would marry me. Then I became engaged to yet another Prince, and as I was traveling over the sea to meet this husband, my ship became stuck in a furious storm, which put my life in impending peril. Still, I composed the following epitaph for myself:
Here died Margot, a gentle lady
Who had two husbands and was still a maid
In truth, I ended up not dying; but that was not my doing. Consider this death well, and you will be satisfied. The firmness of Cato is exaggerated in one way, yours in another, and mine was natural. He was too affected, you were too light-hearted, and I was reasonable.
Hadrian
What? You reproach me with having too little fear of death?
M. of Austria
Yes; it seems that one cannot avoid being upset in any way while dying; and I am sure that it took you as much violence against yourself to banter as it took Cato to tear open his torso. I expected a shipwreck at any moment without being frightened, and with sang-froid I composed my own epitaph; that is very extraordinary, and if nothing softened my story, people would be right not to believe it, or to think that I was only boasting. However, I was a poor girl who had been engaged twice, and I was sad to die without having been married; I wrote down the regret that I felt, and this shows that I acted sincerely. Your verses did not mean anything, they were only a galimatias of playful words; the meaning of mine was very clear, and one is immediately satisfied by them, which shows that they are much more natural than yours.
Hadrian
In truth, I would never have thought that being upset at dying as a virgin would have given you more glory than me.
M. of Austria
Joke as much as you want; but my death, if it can be called that, has an essential advantage over Cato's and yours. You both claimed to be philosophers during your lives, and your honor required you both not to fear death: if you had been allowed to fear it, I don't know what would have happened. But for myself, as long as the storm lasted I would have been permitted to tremble and cry to heaven without anyone esteeming me any less, and I nonetheless stayed calm enough to write my epitaph.
Hadrian
Just between us, didn't you write that epitaph once you reached land?
M. of Austria
Ah! That suspicion is in bad taste; I didn't suggest anything like that about your verses.
Hadrian
Then I completely believe you, and I admit that virtue is very great when it doesn't pass the limits that are set by nature.
Dialogue IV
On how much use there is in the discoveries that the moderns have made in physiology and medicine
Erasistratus, William Harvey
Erasistratus
You are telling me things that are marvelous. What? Blood circulates in the body? Veins carry it from the extremities to the heart, and it leaves the heart to enter the arteries, which carry it to the extremities?
Harvey
I've shown it by so many experiments that no one doubts it.
Erasistratus
Then we doctors from antiquity were very much mistaken, who thought that the blood only moved very slowly from the heart to the extremities of the body; and people are very obliged to you for having done away with this old error.
Harvey
I claim as much, and people should even feel more obliged to me, since I was the one who put them on the track toward making those precious discoveries that people make today in anatomy. Since I discovered that blood circulates, people have been finding new conduits, canals, and reservoirs. It seems that people have found new foundations for everything in man. See how many advantages our modern medicine has over yours. You took it upon yourself to heal the human body, and it wasn't even known to you.
Erasistratus
I admit that the moderns are better physiologists than us, they know nature better; but they are not better doctors, we healed the sick as well as they do. I would have really liked to give all these moderns, and you first, the Prince Antiochus, to heal him of his quartan fever. You know how I inspected him, and how I discovered, when his pulse quickened more than usual in the presence of Stratonice, that he loved this beautiful queen, and that his entire illness came from the violence it took him to hide his passion. However, I cured someone as sick as he was, without knowing that the blood circulates, and I think that with all the help that this knowledge gives you, you would have been very awkward in my place. It's not at all a question of new conduits, or of new reservoirs; what is most important to know about people who are sick, is their heart.
Harvey
It is not always a question of a person's heart, and every sick person is not in love with his mother-in-law, like Antiochus. I don't doubt at all that because you didn't know that the blood circulates, you let many people who were in your hands die.
Erasistratus
What? You think that your new discoveries are very useful?
Harvey
Definitely.
Erasistratus
Respond then, please, to a little question I will ask you. Why do we see as many dead people coming down here everyday as we do?
Harvey
Oh! If they die, that's their fault; it's not that of doctors.
Erasistratus
But the circulation of the blood, the conduits, the canals, the reservoirs, all that can't heal them then?
Harvey
People haven't yet had the time to find the uses of everything they've only learned recently, but it is impossible that in time we won't see great effects.
Erasistratus
On my word, nothing will change. Do you see? There is a certain amount of useful knowledge, which men have discovered early, to which they hardly add, and which they hardly pass beyond, if they pass beyond it. They owe this to nature, that she has inspired them very quickly with what they need to know; because they would be lost if they left it to the slowness of their reason to find it. As for other things that are not as necessary, reason can discover it little by little, and in a long series of years.
Harvey
It would be strange if when man was known better, he couldn't be more often cured. If that were so, why amuse oneself in trying to perfect the knowledge of the human body? It would be better just to leave it alone.
Erasistratus
People would lose some very pleasant knowledge; but as for utility, I think that to discover a new conduit in the human body or a new star in the sky, is much the same thing. Nature wants men to succeed each other after a certain amount of time by means of dying; it is allowed them to defend themselves against it up to a certain point; but after that, a person can make precious new discoveries in anatomy, or penetrate deeper and deeper into the structure of the human body, he will never make a dupe of nature, people will die as usual.
Dialogue VI
On the immortality of one’s name
Berenice, Cosimo II de' Medici
C. de' Medici
I just learned news that afflicts me very much from some scholars who recently died. You know that Galileo, who was my mathematician, had discovered certain planets that rotated around Jupiter to which he gave the name the Stars of Medici in my honor. But someone has told me that they are hardly known under this name at all anymore, and that people simply call them the Satellites of Jupiter. The world must be very wicked at present, and very envious of other people's glory.
Berenice
Without a doubt; I have hardly ever seen such remarkable effects of it's malignity.
C. de' Medici
You can speak at your leisure after all of the luck you have had. You made a vow to cut your hair if your husband Ptolemy would be the victor of I-don't-know-which war. He came back having defeated his enemies; you consecrated your hair in a Temple of Venus, and the next day a mathematician made it disappear, and told everyone that it had changed into a constellation that he called the Hair of Berenice. To try to pass off stars as a woman's hair is much worse than giving a prince's name to new planets; however, your hair is remembered, and the poor Stars of Medici are not.
Berenice
If I could give you my hair in the sky, I would, to console you; and I would even be so generous as to claim that such a present would not make you very indebted to me.
C. de' Medici
However, it would be very considerable; and I wish that my name was as assured of surviving as yours.
Berenice
Alas! If every constellation were called by my name, would I be better off? My name would be up in the sky, and I would still be down here. Men are amusing; they cannot escape death, and they try to help two or three syllables that belong to them to escape. There is a pretty little folly that they run after. Wouldn't it be better for them to consent to die with good grace, them and their names?
C. de' Medici
I am not of your opinion at all; people try to die as little as possible, and as dead as they may be, they still try to cling to life; with a marble statue of themselves, with stones that they lift on top of each other, or even with a tomb. They would hang and drown themselves for all of this.
Berenice
Yes, but the things that are supposed to guarantee that their names survive, die themselves. What would you attach your immortality to? A city, an empire even, cannot assure that it will continue.
C. de' Medici
It's not a bad idea to give one's name to the stars, they last forever.
Berenice
From what I hear said about them, stars themselves are subject to caution. People say that there are new ones that come to be, and old ones that go out; and you will see that in the end, my locket of hair will not stay in the sky. At the very least, our names will die grammatically; a few changes in the letters make them useful only for perplexing scholars. A little while ago, I saw two dead men who were arguing heatedly with each other. I approached and asked them who they were; one responded that he was Constantine the Great, and the other that he was a Barbarian Emperor. They were arguing over which one was greater in life. Constantine said that he was the Emperor of Constantinople; and the Barbarian responded that he was the Emperor of Istanbul. To show how great Constantinople was, Constantine said that it was between three seas; the Euxeinos Pontos, the Bosporus of Thrace, and the Propontis. The other replied that Istanbul also commanded three seas; the Black Sea, the Strait, and the Sea of Marmara. This similarity between Constantinople and Istanbul surprised Constantine; but after he was told exactly where Istanbul was, he was still more surprised to find that it was Constantinople, and that he didn't recognize it because it had changed names. 'Alas!', he cried, 'I might as well have had Constantinople keep it's first name, Byzance. Who will recognize the name Constantine in Istanbul? My name has already met it's end.'
C. de' Medici
In good faith, you are consoling me a little, and I am resolved to have patience. After all, since we cannot avoid dying, it is reasonable enough that our names die also; they are not better off than us.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD MODERNS
Dialogue I
Comparison of ambition and love
Anne de Bretagne, Mary of England
A.de Bretagne
I'm sure my death gave you great pleasure. You immediately crossed the sea to marry Louis XII and seize the throne that I left empty. But you didn't enjoy it for very long, and I was avenged by your youth itself, and by your beauty that made you too lovable to the king, and that consoled him too easily for my loss; because it made him die of a heart attack and kept you from being queen for long.
M. of England
It's true that I hardly saw the royal house before it disappeared into less than nothing.
A. de Bretagne
And after this, you became the Duchess of Suffolk? That's quite a downfall. Thank heaven, I had a different destiny. When Charles VIII died, I didn't lose my rank at all, and married his successor, an example of a singular happiness.
M. of England
Would you believe me if I told you that I never envied you that happiness?
A. de Bretagne
No. I know too well what it would be like to be the Duchess of Suffolk after having been the Queen of France.
M. of England
But I loved the Duke of Suffolk.
A. de Bretagne
No matter. When one has enjoyed the pleasures of being Royalty, can one enjoy others?
M. of England
Yes, if they're those of love. I assure you that you never needed to wish me ill for having succeeded you; if I had been at my own disposal, I would never have been anything but a Duchess, and I would have quickly returned to England to take this title, and be discharged of that of Queen.
A. de Bretagne
Do you have such unqueenly feelings?
M. of England
I admit that I was never touched with ambition. Nature gave men pleasures that are simple, easy, and tranquil, and their imagination gave them ones that are obstructed, uncertain, and difficult to acquire; but nature is cleverer than they are at giving them pleasure. Why not rely on her for this? She has invented love, which is very agreeable, and they have invented ambition, of which there was no need.
A. de Bretagne
How can you say that men have invented ambition? Nature inspires the desire for elevation and command no less than the tendency to love.
M. of England
It is easy to recognize ambition as the work of mans imagination; it has the character. It is restless, full of chimerical projects; it goes beyond it's desires and the things it has accomplished; it can never find it's limit.
A. de Bretagne
And unhappily love is satisfied with it’s all too soon.
M. of England
With the result that one can find happiness in love many times, but one can't in ambition even once; or if it is possible to, at least such pleasures are made for very few people; and consequently it's not at all a gift from nature to men, because natures favors are always very general. Observe love: it is made for everyone. Only to people who look for their happiness in too high a station does nature seem to begrudge the sweetness of love. A king who is sure of a hundred thousand soldiers can hardly be sure of his lovers heart. He doesn't know if someone loves him for his rank and would act the same for anyone in his place. His Royalty costs him all of the pleasures that are simplest and sweetest.
A. de Bretagne
You don't make Kings unhappier with this inconvenience than they are happy to be King. When one sees one's will not only followed, but anticipated, an infinity of fortunes that depend on a word that one can pronounce whenever one wants; so many cares, so many plans, so much eagerness, so much desire to please, of which you are the only object; in truth, one consoles oneself for not knowing immediately if one is loved for one's rank or person. The pleasures of ambition are made, you say, for very few people; but you reproach them for what gives them more charm. In happiness, being an exception is delightful; and those who rule are excepted from the condition of other men with such advantage that when they lose something of the pleasures that belong to everyone, they are recompensed by the rest.
M. of England
Ah! Judge of the loss they have by the feeling with which they receive these simple and common pleasures once they are presented to them. Listen to what a Princess of my blood told me here the other day, who ruled in England for a long time and very happily. She was giving a first audience to the Ambassadors of Holland who had a young and very handsome man in their retinue. The moment he saw the Queen, he turned toward those who were near him and said something quietly enough, but with such an air that she nearly guessed what it was, because women have an admirable instinct. The three or four words of this young Hollander, that she hadn't heard, brought him closer to her spirit than the whole harangue of the Ambassadors, and as soon as he left, she wanted to assure herself of what she thought. She asked those who spoke with the young man what he had said. They responded with a lot of respect that it was something they wouldn't dare say to a great Queen, and defended themselves for a long time by repeating that. Finally, when she reminded them of her absolute authority, she learned what the Hollander had cried so softly. 'Ah! She is a beautiful woman', and he added some expression that was rude enough, but warm, to show how much he liked her. They only told this to the Queen while trembling, but nothing happened except, when she dismissed the Ambassadors, she gave the young Hollander a considerable present. See how even with all the pleasures of grandeur and Royalty that surrounded her, the pleasure of being found beautiful struck her deeply.
A. de Bretagne
But in the end, she didn't accept it at the loss of the others. Everything that is too simple never accommodates men. It doesn't suffice that pleasures touch them with sweetness; they must take action and transport them. How come pastoral life, such as poets depict, has never been outside their works and hasn't succeeded in practice? It is too sweet and too smooth.
M. of England
I admit that men spoil everything. But how does it happen that the most superb and pompous court in the world delights them less than the images they sometimes put forth of pastoral life? It's because they were made for it.
A. de Bretagne
Then your simple and tranquil pleasures have no place but in the chimeras of men.
M. of England
No, no. If it's true that few people have enough good taste to begin with these pleasures, at least they willingly end with them if they can. Imagination makes its way through false objects and comes back to true ones.
Dialogue II
If there is anything that glory can be founded on
Charles V, Erasmus
Erasmus
Don't doubt it; if we dead people each had a rank, I would be above you.
Charles V
What? A grammarian, a scholar; and to be as kind as possible and give you as much merit as you could possibly claim, a man with spirit, would claim to have the upper hand over a prince who was master of the better part of Europe?
Erasmus
Add America, and I still wouldn't fear you. All this grandeur was only yours because of chance, and whoever would look into everything that it was based on would see that very clearly. If your grandfather Ferdinand had been a man of letters, you would have had nearly nothing in Italy; if other princes had had the wit to believe that there were Antipodes, Christopher Columbus would have gone to them, and America would not be among your states at all; if after the death of the last duke of Burgundy, Louis XI had thought about what he was doing, Maximilian would not have inherited Burgundy, nor would you have inherited the Netherlands; if Henry of Castille, the brother of your grandmother Isabella, had never had a bad reputation with women, or if his wife's virtue had been less doubtful, Henry's daughter would have passed for as much, and the kingdom of Castille would have escaped you.
Charles V
You're making me tremble. It seems to me that now I'm either going to lose Castille, the Netherlands, America, or Italy.
Erasmus
Don't make fun. You couldn't have improved any of those things with your good sense or confidence. Only the powerlessness of your great-uncle or the flirtatiousness of your great-aunt could have helped you. You see what a delicate edifice something is, which is only founded on so much chance.
Charles V
In truth, there's no way to survive an examination as rigorous as yours. I admit that all my grandeur and titles disappear before you.
Erasmus
But those are the qualities that you pride yourself on; and I've taken them away from you easily. Do you remember the story of the Athenian Cimon who, having taken many Persians as prisoners, was selling their clothes in one place, and in another the naked prisoners themselves; and since all their clothes were full of great magnificence, people were crowding to buy them; but as for the men, seeing them naked, people didn't want them at all? In good faith, I think that what happened to the Persians there would happen to many others, if someone separated their personal merit from what fortune has given them.
Charles V
But what is personal merit?
Erasmus
Is it necessary to ask? Everything that is within us. The spirit, for example, and knowledge.
Charles V
And glory can reasonably be founded on them?
Erasmus
Without a doubt. They don't belong to chance, like nobility or riches.
Charles V
I'm surprised by what you're saying. Doesn't knowledge come to scholars in the same way that wealth comes to most rich people? Is it not by way of succession? You learned men inherit the work of former men as much as we do. If someone left us everything we own, someone also left you everything you know; and that is the reason that many scholars regard what they received from the ancients with the same respect with which some people regard the lands and mansions of their ancestors, which they would very much hate to change.
Erasmus
But the nobility were born inheriting the wealth and titles of their fathers, and scholars were not born inheriting the knowledge of previous men. Knowledge is not something received by succession at all, it's a completely new acquisition that a person undertakes himself; or if it is a succession, it is difficult enough to receive for doing so to be very honorable.
Charles V
Well so, compare the trouble it takes to acquire spiritual goods with the trouble it takes to conserve the goods of fortune, and they are equal; because in the end, if you only take difficulty into account, it is certain that affairs in the world are more difficult than speculations in a cabinet.
Erasmus
But let's not talk of knowledge; let's discuss the spirit; this good is not dependent on any chance.
Charles V
Not at all? What, doesn't the spirit consist in a certain arrangement of the brain, and is there less chance involved in being born with a well-made brain than in being born with a father who is king? You were a great genius; but ask all the philosophers what kept you from being stupid and a vegetable. Hardly anything; a little placement of fibers, so small that the most delicate anatomy will never perceive it. And after that, these Messieurs with Spirit dare to argue that only they have riches that are independent of chance, and they think that they are in a place to scorn all other men?
Erasmus
In your accounting, being rich or having a spirit are of equal merit.
Charles V
To have a spirit is a happier chance, but at bottom it is always a chance.
Erasmus
Then everything is chance?
Charles V
Yes, provided that one gives this name to an order that one doesn't know at all. I leave you to judge if I haven't stripped men much better than you have; you only took some advantages of birth away from them, and I even took away the spirit. If before founding their vanity on something, people wanted to make sure that it really belonged to them, there would hardly be any vanity in the world.
Dialogue III
On the little solidity there is in pleasures
Elizabeth I of England, the Duke of Alençon
The Duke
But why did you flatter me with the hope of marrying you for so long, when you had resolutely decided in your soul not to go through with it?
Elizabeth
I tricked many other people over the same thing who were no less worthy than you. I was the Penelope of my century. You, your brother the Duke of Anjou, the Archduke, the King of Sweden, you all courted me and wanted an island much larger than Ithaca. I held you all breathless for a few years and in the end made fun of you.
The Duke
There are a few dead people down here who would not completely agree that you altogether resembled Penelope; but one will never find a comparison that is perfect in every detail.
Elizabeth
If you weren't still as scatterbrained as you used to be, and could think about what you were saying...
The Duke
Good, I advise you to be serious. Look at how you have always bragged about your virginity; witness the great region of America to which you gave the name Virginia, in memory of the most doubtful of all your qualities. This country would be very badly named if it didn't have the good luck of being on another continent; but that's not important, that's not what we're talking about. Give me one small reason for this mysterious conduct you persisted in, and for all these plans of marriage that came to nothing. Did the six marriages of your father Henry VIII teach you never to marry, just as the perpetual running about of Charles V taught Philip II never to leave Madrid?
Elizabeth
I could agree to the reason you provided; in fact, my father passed his whole life in getting married, then getting unmarried, then denying that women were his wives, then cutting their heads off. But the true reason for my conduct is that I found nothing more pleasant than to form plans, make preparations, and execute nothing. What people have wanted most ardently was valued less when they obtained it, and things never pass from our imagination to reality without losing something. You came to England to marry me; everywhere were balls, parties, festivities, I even went so far as to give you a ring. Even then everything was as jolly as possible in the world; everything only consisted in preparations and ideas; and so what was agreeable in marriage was already used up. I kept myself like that and sent you back home.
The Duke
Frankly, your maxims don't agree with me at all; I wanted something more than chimeras.
Elizabeth
Ah! If one took chimeras away from men, what pleasure would be left to them? I clearly see that you did not enjoy all of the pleasures offered to you in life; but in good truth, you are very unfortunate for losing them.
The Duke
What? What pleasures were in my life? I never succeeded in anything. I thought I would be king four times; at first of Poland, then of England, then of the Netherlands; finally, France seemed to belong to me; however, I arrived there and didn't rule.
Elizabeth
And there is the happiness which you didn't notice. Always imaginations, hopes, and never realities. You did nothing but prepare to be royalty your whole life, just as I did nothing during my whole life except prepare to be married.
The Duke
But just as I think an effective marriage would have agreed with you, I swear that true royalty would have been very much to my taste.
Elizabeth
Pleasures are not solid enough to allow getting to the bottom of them; one must only touch on them. They resemble those marshy lands on which one has to run lightly or else one loses ones footing.
Dialogue IV
On being crazy
Guillem de Cabestany, Albert Frederick of Brandenburg
A. F. of Branden.
I like you more for having gone as crazy as I did. Tell me the little story of your madness; how did it happen?
G. de Cabestany
I was a provincial poet, very esteemed in my century, which only brought me misfortune. I fell in love with a woman whom my poems made famous. But she liked my verses so much that she feared I would make them for someone else one day; and so that she could be sure that my muse would stay faithful to her, she gave me a cursed drink that made my spirit go mad and made me unable to compose.
A. F. of Branden.
How long has it been since you died?
G. de Cabestany
About four hundred years.
A. F. of Branden.
Poets must have been pretty rare in your century, for them to be esteemed enough to be poisoned like that. It's too bad that you weren't born in the same century as I was; you would have been able to write verses about a bunch of beautiful ladies without any fear of poison.
G. de Cabestany
I know. I haven't seen any of your century's poets come down here complaining of what happened to me. But you, how did you go mad?
A. F. of Branden.
In a way that was very reasonable. A certain King went crazy after he saw a specter in the forest, that's nothing big. But what I saw was much more terrifying.
G. de Cabestany
And what did you see?
A. F. of Branden.
My wedding. I was marrying Marie Eleonore of Cleves; and while I was making judicious reflections on marriage during that great feast, I lost my judgment.
G. de Cabestany
Did you have some intervals in your sickness when you came to?
A. F. of Branden.
Yes.
G. de Cabestany
Too bad; and I was still more unlucky; my understanding completely came back to me.
A. F. of Branden.
I would never have thought that that would be a misfortune.
G. de Cabestany
When one is crazy, it's necessary to be completely crazy and to never stop being so. Alternating reason and folly, and complete returns to reason, only belong to those people who are by chance only a little crazy, and of which the number is not considerable. But look at the usual people whom nature produces everyday, and with which the earth is peopled; they are equally crazy all the time, and they never get better.
A. F. of Branden.
For myself, I would suppose that it's always best to be as little crazy as possible.
G. de Cabestany
Ah! Then you don't know the reason for madness? It prevents us from knowing ourselves, because the sight of oneself is very sad; and since it is never time to know oneself, madness must never abandon men for a single moment.
A. F. of Branden.
That's really beautiful; you will never persuade me that anyone is crazy except for people like us. All the rest of men are reasonable; otherwise losing one's reason wouldn't make any difference; and people would not be able to distinguish lunatics from people with good sense.
G. de Cabestany
Lunatics are only people who have a different way of being crazy. Since men are all mad in the same way, people adjust to each other so easily that their madnesses become the basis for the strongest ties in human society; witness the desire for immortality, this false glory, and many other principles, on which everything in the world depends; and people only call certain lunatics crazy who are, so to say, out of fashion, and whose madness doesn't agree with everyone else’s', and bars them access to the usual commerce of life.
A. F. of Branden.
Lunatics are so crazy that most often they recognize each other as such; but other men recognize each other as being sane.
G. de Cabestany
Ah! What are you saying? All men shake their fingers at each other, and that is very judiciously established by nature. The person who is solitary mocks the courtier; but to make up for it, he never goes to the court to trouble him; the courtier mocks the solitary person, but he leaves him alone in his retreat. If there were some role that people knew was the only sane one, everyone would want to fill it, and there would be too much of a crowd; it's worth more that people divide themselves into many small groups which never bother each other, because they each laugh at what the others do.
A. F. of Branden.
Dead though you are, I find your arguments very mad; you still haven't recovered from the cursed drink that you were given.
G. de Cabestany
And that is the conception that a madman always has to have of other people. A person who was truly sane would be too distinguished; but the opinion that they are sane equalizes all men, and satisfies them just as much.
Dialogue V
On the power of women
Agnes Sorel, Roxelana
A. Sorel
To tell you the truth, I don't understand your Turkish gallantry at all. The beautiful women in a seraglio have a lover who only has to say 'I want her', they never get to enjoy resisting him, and they never give him the pleasure of having won them; that is to say, all the pleasures of love are lost to Sultans and their mistresses.
Roxelana
What do you want? Turkish Emperors, who are extremely jealous of their authority, have neglected the refined sweetness of love for political reasons. They are afraid that if a beautiful woman didn't obey them absolutely, they would have too much power over their spirit, and would interfere too much in their decisions and affairs.
A. Sorel
Ho, well, who knows if that would be a misfortune? Love is sometimes good for a lot of things; and if I, the very person speaking to you, had not been the mistress of the King of France, and I hadn't had very much power over him, who knows where France would be today. Have you heard about how hopeless our affairs were under Charles VII and how they were reduced to such a state that the English were almost completely our masters?
Roxelana
Yes, the story caused quite a stir, and I know about a certain virgin who saved France. Then you were that virgin? How were you the mistress of the King at the same time?
A. Sorel
You're mistaken; I have nothing in common with the virgin you're thinking of. The King I was mistress of wanted to abandon his kingdom to the foreign invaders, and went to hide in a mountain range where it wouldn't be easy to follow him. I devised a stratagem to dissuade him from this plan. I summoned an astrologer who I had secretly met with before, and after he pretended to study the time of my birth, he told me in the presence of Charles VII that either all the stars were villains or that I would be loved for a very long time by a great King. Immediately I said to Charles, 'Then you will not mind, Sire, if I go to the English court; because you do not want to be King, and there's not enough time before they invade for you to fulfill my destiny.' The fear that he had of losing me made him resolve to be the King of France, and from then on he began to re-establish himself. See how France is obliged to love, and how gallant this country should be, if only out of gratitude.
Roxelana
It's true, but then I remember that virgin; what did she do? Could history be so mistaken as to attribute to a young virgin peasant what was accomplished by a woman of the court, the Mistress of the King?
A. Sorel
That history should be mistaken on this point is not so amazing. It is, however, very true that the virgin really animated the soldiers; but it was I who animated the King. She was a great help to him when she carried arms against the English, but without me she never would have. Finally, you won't doubt the part I played in this great affair when you witness the homage that one of Charles VII's successors paid me in this quatrain:
Gentle Agnes, you merit more honor
for having restored France
than can come from inside the cloister
of a nun or a very pious hermit.
What do you think, Roxelana? You must admit that if I had been a woman in a harem like you, and had not had the right to menace Charles VII in the way that I did, he would have been lost.
Roxelana
I admire the vanity that you take away from this little action. You had no trouble in acquiring a great deal of power over the spirit of your lover, you who were free and master of yourself; but me, complete slave that I was, I was still able to have the Sultan serve me. You made Charles VII king nearly despite himself, and me, I made Solomon my husband despite himself.
A. Sorel
What? People say that Sultans never marry.
Roxelana
I know; however, I took it into my head to marry Solomon, though I could only make him marry me by making him hope for some happiness that he had not obtained yet. You're going to hear a stratagem more subtle than yours. I began to build temples, and to do many other pious actions; after which I pretended to be profoundly melancholy. The Sultan asked me why a thousand and two thousand times; and when I did everything that was necessary, I told him that the reason I was upset was that all my pious actions, as the learned people had told me, were never heard by God, since I was a slave who could only address herself to the Emperor Solomon. Immediately Solomon set me free so that I could be rewarded for my pious actions. But when he wanted to sleep with me as usual, and treated me like a woman in a Seraglio, I pretended to be very surprised, and told him with great seriousness that he had no rights over a free woman. Solomon had a sensitive conscience; he went to consult a learned lawyer, with whom I had an understanding. His response was that the Sultan should make sure he didn't ask me to do anything, since I was no longer a slave; and that if he didn't marry me, I couldn't sleep with him. So he became more amorous than ever. There was only one thing he could do, but it was extraordinary, and even dangerous because of it's novelty; however, he did it and married me.
A. Sorel
I admit that it's something to subject someone who has taken so many precautions against us.
Roxelana
Men are in a pretty position; when one stirs up their passion, one can lead them wherever one likes. If someone brought me back to life and presented me with the most imperious man in the world, I could do whatever I wanted with him, provided that I had a lot of wit, enough beauty, and no love.
Dialogue VI
On the anxiety that people have for the future
Joan I of Naples, Anselme
J. of Naples
What? Can't you give me a prediction? You haven't forgotten all the Astrology that you once knew?
Anselme
And how to make use of it? We don't have a sky or stars down here.
J. of Naples
That's not important. I won't make you observe the rules so exactly.
Anselme
It would be amusing for a dead person to make predictions. But still, what would you want me to make them about?
J. of Naples
About me, about what concerns me.
Anselme
Good. You are dead, and you will always be dead: there it is, everything I have to predict for you. Can our condition or concerns change?
J. of Naples
No, but that's what bores me so cruelly; and although I know that nothing will happen to me, if you made some prediction anyway, it wouldn't be lost on me. You have no idea how sad it is not to envisage any future. A little prediction, I beg you, anything you want it to be.
Anselme
On seeing your anxiety, one would think you were still alive. That's what people do up there. People are never able to patiently bear what they are; they are always anticipating what they will be, but here we must be wiser.
J. of Naples
Ah! Aren't men right to do what they do? The present is only an instant, and it would be a great pity if they reduced all of their vision to it. Isn't it worth more that they reach as far as they can, and that they gain something from the future? The future is always as much as they make of it in advance.
Anselme
But they borrow so much from the future with their imaginations and their hopes that when it finally arrives, it has been exhausted and it no longer suits them. Meanwhile, they never get rid of their impatience, nor of their anxiety; the great lure of men is always the future, and we Astrologers know better than anyone. We boldly tell them that there are cold signs and warm signs, that there are males or females in them, that there are good and bad planets, and others that aren't either good or bad in themselves, but which take the one or the other character depending on their arrangement; and all this drivel is very well received, because people think that it leads to a knowledge of the future.
J. of Naples
What, you mean it really doesn't? I think it's strange that you, my Astrologer, are maligning Astrology to me.
Anselme
Listen; a dead man doesn't want to lie. Frankly, when we were alive I was deceiving you with this Astrology that you esteem so much.
J. of Naples
Oh! I don't even believe you. How could you have predicted that I would get married four times? Was there the least chance that a person who was a little reasonable could bring herself to get married four times in a row? You had to have read that in the heavens.
Anselme
I looked to them much less than to your inclinations; but in the end, a few prophecies that come true prove nothing. Do you want me to lead you to a dead fellow who will tell you an amusing story? He was an Astrologer, and he didn't believe in Astrology any more than I did. However, to check to see if there was anything certain in his art, he took great care one day to observe all the rules, and he predicted specific events to someone, more difficult to guess than your four marriages. Everything he predicted happened. He was never more surprised. He immediately went to look back at all the astronomical calculations on which he founded his predictions. Do you know what he found? He made a mistake; and if his calculations had been done correctly, he would have predicted the opposite of what he did before.
J. of Naples
If I believed that this story was true, I would be very angry that people in the world don't know about it, so that they wouldn't be tricked by Astrologers.
Anselme
People know plenty of other stories of the same type, but Astrologers are as well off as ever. People will never be disillusioned with others who look into the future: there is a charm in it that is too powerful. For example, men sacrifice everything they have to a hope; and then everything they have and everything they just acquired, they sacrifice again to another hope; and it seems that this is a malicious order established by Nature, to always take away what people hold in their hands. One never worries about being happy in the moment one is in, one puts this off until a time that is going to come, as though this were made differently than the moment that is already here.
J. of Naples
No, it is not made differently, but it is good that people imagine it is.
Anselme
And what gives you this pretty opinion? I know a short fable that I will tell you. I learned it once in the Court of Love that met in your side of Provence. A man was thirsty and sat down beside a fountain. He didn't want to drink the water that flowed in front of him because he hoped in a little while better water would flow. This time passed; 'Here is the same water,' he said, 'it's not the type I want to drink; I had better wait a little bit still.' Finally, since the water was always the same, he waited so long that the source dried up and he didn't drink anything.
J. of Naples
The same thing happened to me, and I think that of all the dead people here, there isn't one who didn't lose his life before he did what he wanted to with it. But of what importance is that? I count as very much the pleasure of looking ahead, of hoping, even of fearing, and of having a future in front of oneself. A wise man, as you would have him, would be like all of us dead people, for whom the present and the future are exactly the same; and this wise man would consequently be as bored as I am.
Anselme
Alas! Man's is an amusing condition, if it is such as you believe. He was born to aspire to everything and to enjoy nothing; to always march on and to never arrive anywhere.
NEW DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
SECOND VOLUME
-----------------------------------------------------------
TO THE READER.
I am taking the occasion of this new edition to
profit from the critiques made by the public. I
have tried to correct every fault that others or that
I myself could find. Since it seems to me that this
second volume was no less successful than the first,
I wanted to make sure it was worthy of the success
granted to it. If people have found these two volumes
different at all, though I tried for this not to be the
case, I think that in general they found the subjects
were treated more lightly and gaily in the first volume
and a little more profoundly in the second.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD ANCIENTS
Dialogue I
That passions are necessary
Herostratus, Demetrius of Phaleron
Herostratus
Three hundred and sixty statues erected in Athens to your honor: that's a lot.
Demetrius
I seized the government; after that, it was very easy to obtain statues from the people.
Herostratus
Were you very content to be multiplied three hundred and sixty times and to encounter only yourself in the whole city?
Demetrius
I admit it: but alas! This joy didn't last long enough. The face of affairs was changing. Nearly the next day, there was no longer a single one of my statues. People pulled them down and broke them.
Herostratus
There is a terrible reversal; and who was it who instigated such a beautiful thing?
Demetrius
It was Demetrius I of Macedon, son of Antigonus.
Herostratus
Demetrius I of Macedon! I would have really liked to have been in his place. There must have been a lot of pleasure in knocking down so many statues erected to a single man.
Demetrius
Such a wish is worthy of the person who burned down the Temple of Ephesus. You still have your old character.
Herostratus
People really reproached me for the burning of the Temple of Ephesus; all Greece made a lot of noise; but in good truth, it is sad that people hardly ever judge things sanely.
Demetrius
I get the impression that you pity yourself for the injustice that others did you by detesting such a wonderful action, and for the law through which the Ephesians forbade your name from ever being spoken.
Herostratus
I wouldn't complain about that law in the least; because the Ephesians were good people who didn't realize that to forbid a name from being spoken was the same as immortalizing it. But that very law, what was it founded on? I had an immoderate desire to make people talk about me, and I burned down their temple. Shouldn't they count themselves very lucky that my ambition didn't cost them anything more? They couldn't have made out better. Someone else would perhaps have ruined the whole city and the whole state.
Demetrius
People would definitely agree, upon hearing you, that it was right of you not to spare anything in order to make people talk about you, and that they should have counted all the bad things you didn't do as acts of grace.
Herostratus
It is easy to prove to you that I had a right to burn down the Temple of Ephesus. Why did people build it with so much art and so much magnificence? Wasn't the design of the architect to perpetuate his name?
Demetrius
Apparently.
Herostratus
Very well, it was to perpetuate my name that I burned it down.
Demetrius
A beautiful argument! Are you allowed to destroy the works of others for your own glory?
Herostratus
Yes. The vanity that erected this temple with other's hands, was able to ruin it with mine. Vanity has a legitimate right over all the works of men; it made them, and it can destroy them. Even the greatest states cannot complain about their reversal of fortune, when vanity finds that right; they can't prove an origin with no vanity involved. Did that king commit an injustice who razed the city of Alexandria Bucephalous to honor the funeral of his horse? I don't believe so, because no one thought of building this city for any reason but to honor the memory of the horse Bucephalous; and consequently it was done to honor a horse.
Demetrius
According to you, nothing would be safe. I don't know if men themselves would be.
Herostratus
Vanity plays with their lives just as it does with everything else. A father leaves as many children as he can, to perpetuate his name. A conqueror, to perpetuate his, exterminates as many as possible.
Demetrius
I am not surprised that you use all sorts of reasons to argue for people who destroy things, but in the end, if knocking down monuments to the glory of others is a way of establishing one's own, at least no other way is less noble.
Herostratus
I don't know whether it is less noble than other ways; but I know that it is necessary for people to do it.
Demetrius
Necessary!
Herostratus
Definitely. The earth resembles a great tablet where everyone wants to write his name. When the tablet is full, it is necessary to erase some names that have already been written, to make room for writing new ones. What would happen if all the ancient monuments were still around? The moderns would have no place to put their own. Could you hope that your three hundred and sixty statues would stand on their feet for long? Don't you see clearly that your glory took up too much room?
Demetrius
It was an amusing vengeance that Demetrius I of Macedon took on my statues. Since they were already erected once in the whole city of Athens, and others were only going to be erected again, wasn't it worth just as much to let them be?
Herostratus
Yes; but before they were erected, wasn't it worth just as much not to erect them at all? Passions make them and then take them down. If reason ruled on earth, nothing would happen. People say that ship captains fear peaceful seas the most, where they cannot steer and navigate, and that they want the wind, even though it causes tempests. Passions are the winds that are necessary for men, to put everything in movement, even though they often cause storms.
Dialogue II
That one is mistaken for as long as one needs to be
Callirhoe, Paulina
Paulina
I maintain that a woman is in danger as soon as she is loved with ardor. What wouldn't an impassioned lover do to accomplish his designs? I resisted Mundus for a long time, who was a young and very handsome Roman; but finally he won with a stratagem. I was very devoted to the god Anubis. One day a priestess of this god told me on his behalf that he was in love with me, and that he wanted a rendezvous in his temple. The mistress of Anubis! Think of the honor. I didn't fail to show up, I was received with many displays of tenderness; but to tell you the truth, this Anubis was Mundus. Judge whether I was able to defend myself. People often say that women are embraced by gods who are disguised as men, and sometimes as beasts; all the more reason to be embraced by a man disguised as a god.
Callirhoe
In truth, men are very full of artifices. I'm talking from experience, and nearly the same thing happened to me that happened to you. I was a young girl from Troas; and since I was just about to be married, I went, according to the custom of the country, accompanied by a great many people, and with many ornaments, to offer my virginity to the river Scamander. After I gave the river god my compliments, Scamander popped up from between the reeds and took me up on my word. I thought myself very honored, and I think the only person who didn't think the same was my fiancée. Everyone stayed there in a respectful silence; my companions secretly envied my happiness, and Scamander went back to the reeds when he was satisfied. But how surprised I was one day, when I saw this Scamander walking in a little city in Troas, and I learned that he was an Athenian captain who kept his fleet on that very coast!
Paulina
What? Then you actually took him for the true Scamander?
Callirhoe
Without a doubt.
Paulina
And was it the custom in your country for the river to accept the offers that the girls who were about to marry made?
Callirhoe
No; and perhaps if he were accustomed to accept their offers, people wouldn't make them anymore. He was happy with the honor that people did him, and didn't abuse it.
Paulina
Then you really should have been suspicious of that Scamander.
Callirhoe
Why? Couldn't a young girl believe that everyone else wasn't beautiful enough to please the gods, or that they made false offers, which the gods disdained to respond to? Women flatter themselves very easily. But you, who don't think I should have been the dupe of Scamander, you were the same thing with Anubis.
Paulina
Not completely. I doubted a little that Anubis could take the form of a simple mortal.
Callirhoe
And you went to meet him anyway? That's inexcusable.
Paulina
What would you have? I heard all the sages say that if people didn't trick themselves, they would hardly ever enjoy pleasures.
Callirhoe
Good; trick themselves! They obviously didn't mean it in that sense. They meant that the things that are most agreeable in the world are at bottom so little, that they would not move people so much if they gave them any serious thought. Pleasures are not made to be examined rigorously, and every day people have to let pass a large number of things, which it wouldn't be proper to make difficult. That is what your sages...
Paulina
That's just what I meant. If I made this rendezvous with Anubis difficult, I would definitely have found out that he wasn't a god; but I let his divinity pass without wanting to examine it too curiously. And who would have a lover if it depended on the decision of our reason?
Callirhoe
My reason is not so severe. It would be able to find a lover that it would agree deserved my love; and in the end, it is easier to believe that one is loved by a sincere and faithful man than by a god.
Paulina
In good faith, that's nearly the same thing. I would have no sooner been persuaded of Mundus' fidelity and constancy than of his divinity.
Callirhoe
Ah! Nothing is more exaggerated than what you are saying. If someone did believe that gods fell in love, they would at least admit that it didn't happen often; but people frequently see faithful lovers, who don't split up their hearts at all, and who sacrifice everything to their mistresses.
Paulina
If what you take for true signs of fidelity are anxiety, impatience, sacrifices, a complete preference, I admit that enough faithful lovers can be found; but that is not what I mean. I would exclude anyone whose love has been for too short a time to become bored, or who hasn’t been tempted by others. Only the people who maintained their feelings despite time, and despite the affection shown them by other people who were amorous of them would be left, and there are just about as many of these as of gods who have loved mortals.
Callirhoe
Fidelity could still be found, even with that definition. Because if someone tells a woman that he is a god in love with her merit, she doesn't believe him at all; but if he swears that he is faithful, she believes it. Why this difference? It's because there are examples of one, and not of the other.
Paulina
As far as examples go, I say the two are equal; but the reason that people do not mistake a man for a god is because that error is not needed by their heart. One doesn't believe that a man is a divinity because one doesn't hope that he is; but one hopes that he is faithful, and one believes that he is.
Callirhoe
You're making fun. What, all women would take their lovers for gods if they hoped that they were?
Paulina
I almost don't doubt it. If that error were necessary to love, nature would have disposed our hearts to be inspired by it. Our heart is the source of all the errors we need; it refuses us nothing with regard to them.
Dialogue III
On vanity and indiscretion
King Candaules, Gyges
King Candaules
The more I think about it, the more I find that it wasn't necessary for you to kill me.
Gyges
What could I have done? The day after you had shown me the hidden beauties of the Queen, she summoned me, told me that she noticed that you lead me into her bedroom at night, and gave me a pretty speech about how offended her modesty was, whose conclusion was that either I had to die or kill you and marry her at the same time; because, she claimed that it was a matter of her honor that I either possessed the body I had seen or that I could never brag that I had seen it. I understood very well what all of this meant. The outrage wasn't as great as the Queen pretended, and her honor could have let you live, if that was what she wanted; but frankly, she didn't like you anymore, and she was delighted to have a glorious pretext to get rid of her husband. You can understand very well that the other alternative she mentioned was not for me to accept.
King Candaules
I am very afraid that you took more of a liking for her than she took a disliking for me. Ah! How wrong I was not to foresee the effect her beauty would have on you, and to take you for an honest man!
Gyges
Rather reproach yourself for having been so pleased at being the husband of a beautiful wife that you couldn't keep quiet about it.
King Candaules
I would be reproaching myself for the most natural thing in the world. People cannot hide their joy in extreme happiness.
Gyges
It would have been pardonable if it was the happiness of a lover, but yours was the happiness of a husband. One can be indiscrete about a mistress; but about a wife! And what would people think about marriage if they judged it by what you did? They would think that nothing was more charming.
King Candaules
But seriously, do you think that one can be content with a happiness that one possesses without witnesses? The most honest men want to be recognized as honest; and people who are happy also want to be recognized as being perfectly happy. What do I know, if they don't often decide to do things that make them less happy, so that others will think that they are more so? It is certain that people never make displays of their happiness without a sort of insult to the people witnessing it, an insult that they find very satisfying.
Gyges
According to what you said, it would be very easy to avenge oneself for such an insult. All that would be necessary is to close one's eyes to deprive people of their satisfaction, or if you like, of the feelings of jealousy that they see, which constitutes a part of their happiness.
King Candaules
I agree. I heard a story being told by a King of Persia the other day, about when he had been taken captive and brought in chains to the capital city of a great empire. The victorious Emperor, surrounded by his whole court, was seated on a very high and magnificent throne; all of the people crowded into a great space that had been decorated with much care. No spectacle has ever had such pomp. When this King of Persia appeared after a long march of prisoners and spoils, he stopped in front of the Emperor and cried gaily, 'Foolishness, foolishness, all these things are foolishness.' He said that these words alone had spoiled the whole triumph for the Emperor; and I can easily imagine it, because I don't think I would want to triumph over my most cruel and frightening enemy at that price.
Gyges
Then you would no longer have loved the Queen if I didn't find her beautiful, and if when I saw her, I cried, 'Foolishness, foolishness'?
King Candaules
I admit that my vanity as a husband would have been hurt. Judge by that how much the love of a lovely woman is flattering, and the degree to which discretion is a difficult virtue to have.
Gyges
Listen, as dead as I am, I only want to whisper this to another dead person in his ear; there's not so much vanity that can be founded on the love of a mistress. Nature has done so much to make sure that love-making will occur that there aren't many things left for personal merit to influence. There is no heart that hasn't been destined to yearn for another; and nature doesn't always take care to match people who are worthy of each other; it ends up being very mixed, and experience shows only too clearly that being chosen by a lovely woman proves nothing, or nearly nothing, in favor of the person chosen. It seems to me that this reasoning should make lovers discrete.
King Candaules
I declare to you that women would never want discretion like that, which is only founded on people not finding their love a great honor.
Gyges
Isn't it enough for them to take great pleasure in their love? Tenderness would profit from what would be taken away from vanity.
King Candaules
No, they would not accept such a role.
Gyges
But consider that as soon as it enters into it, honor spoils everything in love. At first it is women's honor that is contrary to the interests of their lovers; and then when that honor is destroyed, their lovers form an idea of their own honor which is very contrary to the interests of women. This is what comes of finding honor in a place it should never be.
Dialogue IV
On great events
Helen, Fulvia
Helen
Fulvia, I have to ask you about something that Augustus told me a little while ago. Is it true that you developed a liking for him, but since he didn't respond to you, you excited your husband Marc Antony to make war with him?
Fulvia
Nothing is truer, my dear Helen; I can say so since among us dead people, nothing will come of admitting it. Marc Antony was crazy about the actress Citheride, and I really wanted to revenge myself on him by making love to Augustus; but Augustus was picky with mistresses. He didn't find me young or beautiful enough; and although I gave him to understand that if he didn't make love to me, I would make him fight a civil war, it was impossible for him to like me at all. I will even tell you, if you want, the verses he made on the subject which don't do me much honor. Here they are.
'Since Antony is charmed by Glaphyra,'
- that's what he called Citheride -
'Fulvia is looking to subject me to her.
Antony is unfaithful. And so? Does that mean
that I should have to suffer from it?
What? Me? Serve Fulvia?
Is it enough for her to want it?
If so, people would see a thousand
unsatisfied wives visiting me.
Love me, she tells me, or we will fight. But what?
She is horribly ugly! Sound the trumpets!'
Helen
Then we both have caused, you and I, the two greatest wars that have perhaps ever been waged; you, that between Antony and Augustus; and I, that of Troy.
Fulvia
But there is this difference: you caused the Trojan War with your beauty, and I caused the war between Antony and Augustus with my ugliness.
Helen
In recompense, you had a different advantage over me, which is that your war was much more pleasant than mine. My husband avenged himself for the affront that Paris gave him by loving me, which is very natural; and your husband avenged you for the affront that Augustus gave him by not loving you, which is unusual among husbands.
Fulvia
Yes; but Antony didn't know that he was waging the war for me, and Menelaus knew very well that he was waging the war for you. That is something that cannot be pardoned, because instead of Menelaus followed by all of Greece having seiged Troy for ten years in order to tear you away from Paris' arms, isn't it true that if Paris had wanted to unconditionally give you back, Menelaus should have let Sparta be besieged for ten years rather than receive you? In good faith, I think that they all lost their wits, the Greeks as much as the Trojans. The first were crazy to ask for you back; and the others were still more crazy to keep you. How come so many noble people sacrificed themselves for the pleasure of a young man who didn't know what he was doing? I cannot help but laugh when reading the passage in Homer where, after nine years of war, and such fighting that nearly everyone had died, a counsel is held in front of the palace of Priam. There, Antenor thinks that they should give you back, and it seems to me that there's nothing to criticize in that, except that he's putting the idea forward a little too late. However, Paris shows that the proposition displeases him; and Priam, who according to what Homer says is equal to the gods in wisdom, embarrassed to see his counsel so divided in such an important affair, and not knowing which side to choose, commands everyone to have dinner.
Helen
At least that was good about the Trojan War, that people easily saw how ridiculous it was; but the civil war between Augustus and Antony didn't seem like what it was. When people saw so many Roman soldiers in file, they would never have thought that what animated them so cruelly against each other was that Augustus refused to oblige you.
Fulvia
That's how things happen with men. One sees great movements, but the motives are usually a little ridiculous. It is important for the honor of the most considerable events that their causes be hidden.
Dialogue V
That reason is sad and perhaps even useless
Parmeniscus, Theocritus of Chio
Theocritus
So really, you weren't able to laugh after having descended into the cave of Trophonius?
Parmeniscus
No. I was extraordinarily serious ever since.
Theocritus
If I had known that the cave of Trophonius had this virtue, I would definitely have made a little trip there. I laughed all too much during my life; it might have even been longer if I laughed less. A jest in bad taste has brought me where we are. The king Antigonus was one-eyed. I cruelly offended him; however, he promised to have no resentment, provided that I present myself before him. I was conducted there nearly by force, and my friends, to encourage me, were saying, ''Go, don't be afraid, your life is safe as long as you appear in front of the king.' 'Ah!', I responded, 'If I cannot obtain my pardon without appearing before his eye, I am lost.' Antigonus, who was disposed to pardon me my crime, was not able to pardon my jest, and he cut off my head because I made fun of him inappropriately.
Parmeniscus
I may well have wanted your talent for laughter, even at such a price.
Theocritus
And me, for how much wouldn't I buy your seriousness at present!
Parmeniscus
Ah! You aren't thinking. I thought I would die from the seriousness that you want so badly. Nothing diverted me anymore; I made efforts to laugh, and I wasn't able to at all. I no longer enjoyed any of the ridiculousness in the world; it had all become sad to me. Finally, in desperation at my wisdom, I went to Delphi, and I instantly asked the god to teach me a way to laugh. He sent me back an ambiguous message about Maternal power. I thought that by Maternal power, he meant my country. I returned there, but it didn't cure my seriousness. I began to accept my fate, like someone who was incurably ill, when by chance I made a trip to Delos. There I contemplated with surprise the magnificence of the temples of Apollo, and the beauty of his statues. They were all in marble or in gold, and by the hands of the best sculptors in Greece, but when I came to one of the Latona of the forest, which was very badly made and had exactly the same air as an old hag, I burst into laughter because of the contrast between the statues of the son and of his mother. I cannot express well enough, how surprised, happy, and charmed I was at having laughed. And so I understood the true meaning of the Oracle. I presented no offerings to all the Apollos made of gold or of marble. The Latona of the forest had all my gifts and all my vows. I made I-don't-know how many sacrifices to her. I burned all sorts of incense; I would have erected a temple 'To Latona who makes people laugh', if I had been in a state to spend that much money.
Theocritus
It seems to me that Apollo gave you the ability to laugh, rather than his mother. You had already seen only too many objects that had the exact same air as this Latona.
Parmeniscus
When a man is in a bad humor, he finds that men are not worth the trouble it would take to laugh at them; they were made to be ridiculous, and they are, so much is not surprising; but a goddess who takes it upon herself to be ridiculous, that's much more. Moreover, Apollo apparently wanted to make me see that my seriousness was a sickness that couldn't be cured by any human remedy, and that I was reduced to a state that needed the help of the gods themselves.
Theocritus
This joy and gaiety that you so envy, is even so a still greater illness. A whole people were once seized by it, and suffered very badly.
Parmeniscus
What? A people once found themselves too disposed to gaiety and joy?
Theocritus
Yes; it was the Tirinthians.
Parmeniscus
What lucky people!
Theocritus
Not at all. Since they weren't able to take anything seriously, everything was in disorder among them. If they assembled somewhere, all they could talk about were follies, instead of public affairs; if they received ambassadors, they made fun of them; if they held a town council, the opinions of the gravest senators were only buffooneries; and on every occasion, a reasonable word or action would have been a prodigy among the Tirinthians. Finally, they felt inconvenienced by this spirit of pleasantness, at least as much as you were by your sadness, and they went to consult the oracle at Delphi just like you, but for a different reason, that is, to ask her how to recover a little seriousness. The Oracle said that if they were able to sacrifice a bull to Neptune without laughing, they would henceforth be a little wiser. A sacrifice is not very amusing in itself; even so, they made many preparations to ensure it would be done seriously. They resolved that there should be no young people present, but only old ones, and not just any old ones, but only those who had some sickness, or great debts, or really burdensome wives. When all these chosen persons were at the seaside to sacrifice the victim, they still needed, despite their wives, debts, illness, and age, to compose themselves, lower their eyes to the ground, and bite their lips, but unfortunately they found an infant there, who had escaped. People were chasing after him because of the order about old people, and he cried; 'What? Are you afraid I'm going to swallow your bull?' This piece of foolishness undid all the measures to ensure gravity. People burst into laughter, the sacrifice was disturbed, and reason never returned to the Tirinthians. It was very wrong of them, after the bull failed them, not to think of this cave of Trophonius that had the virtue of making people so serious, and that had such a remarkable effect on you.
Parmeniscus
In truth, I descended into the cave of Trophonius; but the cave of Trophonius, which made me so sad, isn't what people think it is.
Theocritus
What is it, then?
Parmeniscus
It is reflection. I made them and I no longer laughed. If the Oracle had ordered the Tirinthians to make them, it would have cured them of enjoyment.
Theocritus
I admit that I don't know very well what reflections are, but I can't imagine why they would be so burdensome. Aren't people able to have sane views that aren't at the same time sad? Is there gaiety only in error; and was reason only made to kill us?
Parmeniscus
Apparently the intention of nature was that a person shouldn't think too subtly, because she sells those sorts of thoughts very dear. 'You wan't to make reflections?' she tells us; 'Take care, I will avenge myself with the sadness they will give you.'
Theocritus
But you don't say why nature doesn't want us to push our reflections as far as they can go.
Parmeniscus
She has put men in the world to live; and to live, that's not knowing what one's doing most of the time. When we discover what little importance there is in what occupies and touches us, we tear a secret away from nature; one becomes too wise, and is not enough of a man; one thinks and doesn't want to act; that is what nature doesn't find good.
Theocritus
But when reason makes you think more clearly than others, it exempts you from acting like them.
Parmeniscus
What you're saying is true. There is a power of reasoning that lifts us above everything through our thoughts; and then there is another that brings us back to everything in order to act; but in this account still, isn't that nearly the same thing as never having thought at all?
Dialogue VI
On liberty
Brutus, Faustina the Younger
Brutus
What? Is it possible that you took pleasure in the thousand infidelities you committed against the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a husband who was kind to you in every way imaginable, and who was unarguably the best man in the whole Roman Empire?
Faustina
And is it possible that you assassinated Julius Caesar, an Emperor so pleasing and so moderate?
Brutus
I wanted to frighten all tyrants, through the example of Caesar, whose sweetness and moderation could not keep him safe.
Faustina
And if I said that I wanted to frighten all husbands in the same way, so that no one would dare think of being one after the example of Marcus Aurelius, whose good-will was so badly repaid?
Brutus
That would be a beautiful idea! There must be husbands, because who would take care of women? But Rome had no need of being taken care of by Caesar.
Faustina
What did you say? Rome was beginning to have fantasies as excessive and humors as strange as people attribute to most women; it would not have been able to do without a master, but it couldn't be happy having one. Women are of just the same character. One must also agree that men are too jealous of their control. They exercise it in marriage, that is already a great concession, but then they even want to exercise it in love. When they ask a mistress to be faithful to them, faithful means subservient. The empire would have to be equally divided between a lover and his mistress; meanwhile power is always on the side of only one of them, and nearly always the man's.
Brutus
Then you are strangely revolting against all men.
Faustina
I am Roman, and I have Roman feelings about liberty.
Brutus
I assure you that in that regard, the whole universe is full of Romans; but admit that Romans such as I are a little rarer.
Faustina
So much the better that they are so rare. I don't believe that an honest man would want to do what you did, and assassinate his benefactor.
Brutus
I believe just as little that there are honest women who would want to imitate your conduct. For myself, you cannot deny that it took a great deal of firmness. A lot of courage was necessary not to be moved by the friendship Caesar had for me.
Faustina
Do you think it took less courage to hold out against the sweetness and patience of Marcus Aurelius? He would regard all my infidelities with indifference; he wouldn't do me the honor of becoming jealous; he took the pleasure of making him a cuckold away from me. I would become so angry when he wanted to consider me an honest woman. Meanwhile I kept on cheating on him, and even after my death, didn't Marcus Aurelius do me the insult of building temples to me, having priests worship me, instituting Faustinian Festivals in my honor? Isn't that enough to put one in a rage? To give me a magnificent apotheosis! To set me up as a Goddess!
Brutus
I admit that I no longer understand women. Those are the most bizarre complaints in the world.
Faustina
Wouldn't you rather have conspired against Sulla than against Caesar? Sulla could have excited your indignation and your hatred with his extreme cruelty. In the same way, I would rather have betrayed a jealous man; this same Caesar, for example, of whom we're speaking. He had unbearable vanity; he wanted to be emperor of the entire world, and the only man for his woman; and when he saw that Clodius cheated with one of his wives, and Pompey with another, he could suffer neither Pompey nor Clodius. How happy I would have been with Caesar!
Brutus
Just a moment ago you wanted to exterminate all husbands, and now you love the worst ones most.
Faustina
I would rather not have any, so that women could finally be completely free; but if I had to have one, the worst ones please me the most because of the pleasure one can take in getting one's freedom back.
Brutus
I think that for women with your humor, it is best that there are husbands. Love of liberty increases with malignity.
DIALOGUES
OF DEAD ANCIENTS
AND MODERNS
Dialogue I
If the wisdom that comes from one's reason is more assured than that which comes from one's temperament
Seneca, Clement Marot
Seneca
You overwhelm me with joy by telling me that there are still Stoics and that in the most recent times you were a member of this sect.
Marot
Without vanity, I was more of a Stoic than you, Chrisippus, and Zeno, your founder. You were all able to philosophize at your leisure; you all, and in particular you, never lacked wealth. As for the others, they were neither exiled nor sent to prison; but I endured poverty, exile, and prison and I let it be witnessed that all these evils stop with the body, and cannot pass to the soul of wise men. Chagrin was always ashamed that it couldn't enter into me, no matter how it tried.
Seneca
I am delighted to hear you talk that way. By your language alone, I recognize you as a great Stoic. And weren't you admired in your century?
Marot
Yes, I was. I didn't content myself with suffering my misfortunes with patience; I insulted them, if a person can say that, with little mockeries. Firmness would have done honor to someone else, but I went all the way to gaiety.
Seneca
Oh Stoic wisdom, you are not a mirage like people say you are! You are still found among men, and here is a sage that you have made as happy as Jupiter himself. Come, so that I can introduce you to Zeno and the other Stoics, I want them to see the fruit of the admirable lessons they gave to the world.
Marot
You oblige me very much, to make me familiar with such illustrious dead people.
Seneca
What should I say your name is?
Marot
Clement Marot.
Seneca
Marot? I know that name. Haven't I heard many modern princes down here talking about you?
Marot
It could be.
Seneca
Didn't you make, for their enjoyment, many little poems that they found amusing?
Marot
Yes.
Seneca
But then, you weren't a philosopher?
Marot
Why not?
Seneca
It's not the occupation of a Stoic to write books full of jokes and to think about making people laugh.
Marot
Oh! I see that you haven't understood what is perfect about jokes. All wisdom can be reinforced by them. One can make people laugh at anything; I could even make them laugh at your books if I wanted to, and very easily; but not everything can be regarded seriously, and I defy you to ever make my books produce that effect. Doesn't this mean that what should make people laugh dominates everywhere, and that things in the world are not made to be taken seriously? I learned down here that people have put the divine Aeneid by Virgil into burlesque verse. I was delighted; there is no better way to show that the magnificent and the laughable are so close that they touch. Everything resembles those tricks of perspective, where figures that are placed here and there resemble, for example, an Emperor if you look at them from one place, and if you change your point of view, the same figures look like a beggar.
Seneca
I regret that people didn't understand that your playful verses were supposed to lead them to such profound reflections. They would have respected you more than they did, if they knew how great a philosopher you were; but it isn't easy to guess from the pieces that they say you published.
Marot
If I had written large volumes that proved that prison, ill fortune, and exile should never take anything away from the gaiety of wise people, wouldn't it have been worthy of a Stoic?
Seneca
Easily.
Marot
And I wrote I-don't-know-how-many books that proved that despite exile, prison, and ill fortune, I had such gaiety; isn't that worth more? Your moral treatises are only speculations about wisdom; but my verses were a continual practice of it in the different states I found myself in.
Seneca
I am sure that your so-called wisdom was not the effect of your reason, but of your temperament.
Marot
And that is the best type of wisdom that can appear in the world.
Seneca
Good. People who are wise because of their temperament are amusing. If they aren't foolish, is it to their credit? The luck of being virtuous can sometimes come from nature; but the merit of being virtuous can only ever come from reason.
Marot
People seldom esteem what you call a merit; because if a man shows some virtue and people see that it isn't natural to him, they count it for nearly nothing. Meanwhile, it would seem that because it was acquired with difficulty, it should be esteemed more; that doesn't matter, that's purely a reasonable conclusion, people don't trust it.
Seneca
One should trust your sages even less, considering how uneven people's temperaments are. They are only wise as long as it pleases their blood. People would have to know how their innards are doing, to be sure of how far their virtue extends. Isn't it worth incomparably more to only let oneself be led by reason, and to make oneself so independent of nature as not to have to fear any surprises from it?
Marot
That would be better, if it were possible; but unfortunately, nature always guards it's rights; one can never take away from it the ability to make first decisions; often they are nearly completed before reason notices them; and when reason finally begins to start doing something, it finds everything already in disorder. It is already a great feat just to ask if it could repair anything. In truth, I am not surprised that so many people do not completely trust in reason.
Seneca
Meanwhile, it belongs to reason alone to govern men and to rule everything in the universe.
Marot
Reason, though, is hardly in a state to enforce its authority. I heard that some hundred years after your death, a Platonic philosopher asked the Emperor who was reigning then, if he could have a small city in Calabria that was completely ruined, so that he could rebuild it and rule it according to the laws in Plato's Republic, and call it Platonopolis; but the Emperor refused this to the philosopher and did not have enough confidence in the divine Plato's reason to give him the government of this little city. Judge by that the extent to which reason has lost it's credibility. If it were in the least way estimable, there would only be humans to esteem it, and humans don't.
Dialogue II
On the perfection that men aspire to
Artemisia II of Caria, Ramon Llull
Artemisia
This is completely new to me. You say that there's a secret for changing metals into gold, and that this secret is called the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Great Work?
R. Llull
Yes, and I looked for it for a long time.
Artemisia
Did you find it?
R. Llull
No; but the whole world thought I did, and it still does. The truth is, this secret is only a chimera.
Artemisia
Then why did you look for it?
R. Llull
I didn't know it was a chimera until I came down here.
Artemisia
It seems to me that you found out a little too late.
R. Llull
I can tell that you want to make fun of me. Nonetheless, we resemble each other more than you think.
Artemisia
Me? I resemble you? I, who am a model of conjugal fidelity, who drank the ashes of my husband, who erected a superb monument for him, how could I resemble a man who spent his life looking for the secret of changing metals into gold?
R. Llull
Yes, yes. I know very well what I'm saying; after all of the beautiful things that you pride yourself on, you went mad over a young man who didn't love you. You sacrificed that magnificent building to him, the one that has brought you so much glory; and the ashes of Mausolus that you swallowed were not a sufficient remedy against your new passion.
Artemisia
I can't believe that you are so well instructed about my affairs. That part of my life was quite unknown, and I didn't imagine there were many people who were aware of it.
R. Llull
You admit then that our destinies are similar, in that the world gives us both honors we don't deserve; to you, believing that you were always faithful to the memory of your husband; and to me, thinking that in the end I discovered the Great Work.
Artemisia
I will admit it very willingly. The public is made to be the dupe of a lot of things; one must profit from it's dispositions.
R. Llull
But isn't there more that we both have in common?
Artemisia
At present I find myself very closely resembling you. Speak.
R. Llull
Haven't we both looked for something impossible to find; you for the secret of being faithful to your husband; and me for that of changing metals into gold? I think that it is the same with conjugal fidelity as it is with the Philosopher's Stone.
Artemisia
There are people who have such a bad opinion of women that they would say the Philosopher's Stone is not impossible enough to enter into the comparison.
R. Llull
Oh! I guarantee you it is as impossible as it can be.
Artemisia
But how does it happen that people look for it, and that you yourself, who seem to have been a man with good sense, gave into this dream?
R. Llull
It is true that one cannot find the Philosopher's Stone, but it is good that one looks for it. In looking, one finds very beautiful secrets one wasn't looking for.
Artemisia
Wouldn't it be better to look for the secrets that one can find than to think of those one never will?
R. Llull
All the sciences have their chimera that they run after; but on the way they stumble on other very useful knowledge. If chemistry has it's Philosopher's Stone, Geometry has it's Quadrature of a Circle, Astronomy it's Longitudes, Mechanics it's Perpetual Motion; it is impossible to find all this, but very useful to look. I was speaking language that you may not have understood very well, but you will understand at least that morality too has its chimera; it is disinterestedness, perfect friendship. One will never reach it, but it is good that one tries. At least in trying, one reaches very many other virtues.
Artemisia
Yet again, I am of the opinion that one should leave all those chimeras and start looking for things that are real.
R. Llull
Would you believe it? It is necessary that in all things men propose a point of perfection beyond what they can reach. They would never try to do anything if they thought they would only do what they really could; it is necessary that they have before their eyes an imaginary goal that inspires them. If someone told me that chemistry couldn't teach me to make gold, I would have neglected it. If someone told you that the extreme fidelity that you were proud of with regard to your husband was not in any way natural, you would not have taken such pains to honor the memory of Mausolus with a magnificent tomb. One would lose courage if one wasn't supported by false ideas.
Artemisia
Then it isn't so bad when men are tricked?
R. Llull
What do you mean, bad? If by some misfortune the truth showed itself as it is, all would be lost; but it seems that it knows how important it is for it to always be concealed in some way.
Dialogue III
That new knowledge can be discovered and not new pleasures
Apicius, Galileo
Apicius
Ah! How angry I am that I wasn't born in your century!
Galileo
It seems to me that with your disposition you should have been well enough accommodated in the century you lived in. You only wanted to eat delicious food, and since Rome was the peaceful master of the universe, you found the rarest birds and fish arriving there from all sides, so that finally, the whole earth seemed to be subjugated to the Romans only so that it could contribute to their excellent dining.
Apicius
But my century was ignorant; and if there was a man like you, I would have gone to the end of the earth for him. Travel was nothing to me. Do you know what I did for a certain type of fish that I used to eat in the country at Minturne? Someone told me that this fish was much bigger in Africa; immediately I equipped a ship and set sail. The journey was difficult and dangerous. When we approached the coast of Africa, I don't know how many fishermen rowed up to us who had heard about my voyage, and were ready to sell me those fishes. I found them no bigger than at Minturne; and immediately, without being touched with curiosity to see a country that I had never seen, with no regard to the pleas of my sailors, who wanted to refresh themselves on land, I ordered the navigators to return to Italy. You can believe that I would have happily done something as tiring for you.
Galileo
I can't guess what your reason would be. I was a poor man of knowledge, accustomed to a frugal life, always attached to the stars, and not clever at all about what is tasty.
Apicius
But you invented glasses that extended people's sight; after you, people did the same thing for their hearing, and I heard about tubes that doubled a person's voice. In the end, you perfected, and taught others to perfect, their senses. I would have begged you to do something for the sense of taste, and to invent an instrument that would increase the pleasure of eating.
Galileo
Very nice; as if taste didn't naturally have all the perfection it could.
Apicius
Why would it be any more perfect than sight?
Galileo
Sight is already very perfect. Men have very good eyes.
Apicius
And how about the bad eyes which your telescopes are able to help?
Galileo
Those are the eyes of philosophers. These people, who think it is important if there is a spot on the sun, if the planets spin about their centers, if the milky way is composed of stars, etc., don't have good enough eyes to see these things as clearly and as exactly as they need to; but other men, who think all of that is indifferent, have admirable vision. If you only want to enjoy things, you lack nothing to enjoy them; but you lack everything to know them. Men need nothing, and philosophers need everything. Inventions can give no new help to the former, and can never give enough to the latter.
Apicius
I agree that inventions can't give the majority of men new instruments to taste things better; but it would be nice for it to give such instruments to philosophers, just like it gave them telescopes to see better, and so repay them well for all the cares that philosophy costs them; because in the end, what use is philosophy unless it discovers things, and what use are discoveries unless they increase people's pleasure?
Galileo
People have made that complaint for a long time.
Apicius
But since reason discovers new things every once in a while, why can't the senses? They would be much more important discoveries.
Galileo
They would be worth much less. Our senses are so perfect that they found at the very first all the pleasures that can flatter them. If reason finds new knowledge, it has reason to pity itself; it's because it is naturally very imperfect.
Apicius
And the kings of Persia, who promised great rewards to those who invented new pleasures, were they crazy?
Galileo
Yes. I am sure that their purses weren't emptied by rewarding such things. Invent new pleasures! It would be necessary to invent new needs in men.
Apicius
What? Every pleasure is founded on a need? I would like it better to abandon the one for the other. Then nature hasn't given us anything gratuitously?
Galileo
That is not my fault. But you, who condemn my opinion, it would be better for you than for anyone else if it were true. If people could find new pleasures, how would you ever console yourself for not living in the very latest times, when you could profit from the discoveries of every century? As for new knowledge, I know that you don't envy the people that have it.
Apicius
I'm beginning to agree with you, your opinion is better for me than I can imagine. I see that there isn't any great advantage in new knowledge, since it is abandoned to whoever wants to seize it, and since nature hasn't taken any trouble to make it equal for men of every century; but pleasures are of the highest value. There would be too much injustice to suffer if one century had more of it than another, and so each shares it equally for this reason.
Dialogue IV
If love can be spiritual
Plato, Margaret of Scotland
M. of Scotland
Come to my aid, divine Plato, take up my argument, I entreat you.
Plato
What is it about?
M. of Scotland
It's about a kiss that I gave with some ardor to a learned man who was extremely ugly. To justify myself, I'll say again what I've been saying everywhere, that I wanted to kiss the mouth that had said so many beautiful words; there are I-don't-know how many Shadows down here who make fun of me, and who tell me that such favors are only for mouths that are beautiful and not for those that speak well, and that knowledge is never paid with the same money as love. Go teach those Shadows what is really worthy of causing passions, things that cannot be seen, and that a person can be charmed by the Beautiful, even if it finds itself in a very ugly body.
Plato
Why would you want me to go say those things? They are not true.
M. of Scotland
You have already said them a thousand and two thousand times.
Plato
Yes, but that was while I was living. I was a philosopher, and I wanted to talk about love; it would not have fit the propriety of my character if I had spoken like authors of Milesian fables; I covered this subject with philosophical galimatias, like a cloud which prevents everyone’s eyes from recognizing things for what they are.
M. of Scotland
I don't think that you are considering what you're saying. You definitely had to be talking about a different love from the usual one when you wrote with such pomp about the voyages that winged souls make in chariots into the last vaults of the heavens, where they contemplate the Beautiful in it's essence, their unfortunate falls from a place so elevated down to the earth, one of their horses being to blame since it was difficult to govern, the crumpling of their wings, their stays in bodies, what happens to them when they see a beautiful face and they recognize it for a copy of the Beautiful that they saw in the heavens, their wings warming up, beginning to beat, their attempt to use them to fly toward what they love, finally the fear, horror, fright that they are struck with at the sight of the Beautiful that they know is divine, the holy fury that transports them, and the desire that they feel to make sacrifices to the object of their love, as people do to gods.
Plato
I assure you that when all of this is well understood and faithfully translated, it only means that beautiful people are fit to inspire strong passions.
M. of Scotland
But according to you, people never stop at bodily beauty, which only serves to make them remember a beauty that is infinitely more charming. Is it possible that all the transports that you depicted, which were so lively, were only caused by large eyes, a small mouth, and a fresh complexion? Ah! Say that they were caused by the beauty of the soul if you want to justify them, and yourself for having depicted them.
Plato
Do you want me to tell you the truth? Beauty of insight gives admiration; that of the soul gives esteem; and that of the body gives love. Esteem and admiration are tranquil enough, only love is impetuous.
M. of Scotland
You have become a libertine since your death; because while you were living, you not only spoke in a different tone about love, but you put into practice the sublime ideas that you had conceived. Weren't you in love with Archeanassa of Colophon when she was an old woman? Didn't you make verses for her?
The lovable Archeanassa has merited my feelings.
She has wrinkles, but I see
A troupe of Cupids playing in these wrinkles.
If you were condemned only to see her before her charms
Had through the course of years received these little creases,
Ah! What wouldn't you suffer?
Assuredly, this troupe of Cupids who were playing in Archeanassa's wrinkles were the ornaments of her spirit that had been perfected by age. You pitied those who only saw her when she was young because her beauty gave them too sensual of impressions, and you loved in her the merit that could not be destroyed by time.
Plato
I am very obliged to you for having interpreted so favorably a little satire I made against Archeanassa, who tried to make me love her at the age she had reached. My passions were not as metaphysical as you think at all, and I can prove it to you by other verses I made. If I were living, I would go through the vain ceremony of making Socrates talk about love; I would cover my face and you would only understand me through a veil; but here that is not necessary. Here are my verses.
When Agathon had consented with a burning kiss
To make up for everything I had suffered
I suddenly felt my soul come to my lips,
Which wanted to pass over those of Agathon.
M. of Scotland
Is this Plato I am hearing?
Plato
Himself.
M. of Scotland
What, Plato with his stout shoulders, serious figure, and all that philosophy in his head, Plato knew those types of kisses?
Plato
Yes.
M. of Scotland
But don't you think that with the kiss I gave to my scholar, a completely philosophical one, and the kiss you gave to your mistress, not philosophical at all, that I am acting your part and that you are acting mine?
Plato
I agree; philosophers are amorous, while those who were born to be amorous amuse themselves with philosophy. We let the chimeras of philosophy run away with people that aren't familiar with them, and we turn ourselves toward things that are real.
M. of Scotland
I see how wrong it was of me to ask the lover of Agathon to defend my kiss. However, even if I had felt love for that scholar who was so ugly, I still wouldn't agree with you. The spirit can cause passions all by itself, especially for women. It's their spirit that saves them when they are not beautiful.
Plato
I don't know if the spirit causes passions all by itself; but I know well that it surrounds the body with a certain air that gives birth to them without the help of beauty, and gives it the ornament that it lacks. And the proof is that the body must play it's part and always furnish something for itself, that is, at least youth; because if there is no help to it at all, the spirit is absolutely useless.
M. of Scotland
Always this physicality in love!
Plato
Such is its nature. Give it, if you want, the spirit alone for an object, you will gain nothing; you will be surprised that it immediately enters something physical. If you only loved the spirit of your scholar, why did you kiss him? It's the body that is destined to receive the fruit of passions, even those that the spirit itself has inspired.
Dialogue V
On prejudices
Strato, Raphael of Urbino
Strato
I never expected that the advice I gave to my slave would produce such happy effects. It was worth more to me than life and the kingship together; and here it attracts the admiration of all the wise.
R. of Urbino
And what advice was that?
Strato
I was at Tyr. All the slaves of this town were rebelling and cutting their masters throats; but my slave had enough humanity to spare my life and to hide me from the fury of the others. They agreed to choose for king whoever among them would, on a certain day, perceive the first light of the sun. They assembled in a field. The whole multitude had their eyes glued on the east, where the sun itself would appear; my slave alone, whom I had instructed in what to do, was looking toward the west. You won't doubt that the others treated him as though he were mad. However, he turned his back to them and saw the first rays of light that appeared on the top of a very high tower, while his companions were still looking toward the east for the body of the sun itself. They all admired the subtlety of spirit that he had showed; but he admitted that he owed it to me, and that I was still living, and immediately I was elected king, as though I were divine.
R. of Urbino
I see very well that the advice you gave to your slave was extremely useful to you, but I don't see what is admirable about it.
Strato
Ah! All the philosophers here will tell you that I taught my slave what all the wise must do; that in order to find the truth, it's necessary to turn your back on the multitude, and that common opinions are always sane opinions, provided you reverse their meaning.
R. of Urbino
Such philosophers speak well about philosophy. It's their job to mistrust common opinions and prejudices; nonetheless, there is nothing either as pleasant or as useful as they are.
Strato
To judge by how you're talking, a person would think that by following them you've made a comfortable life for yourself.
R. of Urbino
I assure you that if I am in favor of prejudices, it's without self-interest; because, on the contrary, they have made me look ridiculous enough before. People were working at Rome in the ruins, in order to find statues, and since I was a good sculptor and a good painter, they chose me to judge which ones were antique. Michelangelo, who was my competitor, secretly made a statue of Bacchus which was perfectly beautiful. He broke a finger from it after it was complete, and buried it in a place where he knew someone would find it. As soon as people dug it up, I declared it was antique. Michelangelo argued that it was modern. I founded my argument principally on the beauty of the statue, which in the principles of art, means it came from a Greek hand, and in spite of being contradicted, I placed the Bacchus all the way from the time of Polyclitus or Phidias. In the end, Michelangelo revealed the broken finger, which was undeniable proof. People made fun of my prejudices; but without this prejudice, what would I have done? I was a judge, and I had to decide.
Strato
You could have decided according to reason.
R. of Urbino
And would reason have decided it? I would never have known by consulting reason whether the statue was antique or not; I would have only known that it was very beautiful; but prejudice came to my aid, and told me that the statue must be antique; there it is, a decision, and I judged.
Strato
It may well be that reason cannot provide incontestable principles on matters that are as little important as that; but on everything that has to do with the conduct of men, it makes very certain decisions; the misfortune is that people do not consult it.
R. of Urbino
Let's consult it on some point, to see what it will establish. Let's ask it if it's proper to cry or to laugh when our friends and our parents die. On the one hand, it will tell you, you have lost them; cry. On the other hand, they are delivered from any unhappiness in life; laugh. There they are, the responses of reason; but the custom of the country decides for us. We cry, if it tells us so, and we cry so hard that we cannot conceive how someone would be able to laugh about this; or we laugh, and we laugh so hard that we cannot conceive why someone would cry.
Strato
Reason is not always so indecisive. It lets prejudice decide things that don't merit it's attention; but on how many very considerable things does it have clear ideas, from which it draws conclusions that are just as certain!
R. of Urbino
I am much mistaken if they aren't very few, these clear ideas.
Strato
No matter. One must only allow beliefs to rest on reason.
R. of Urbino
It cannot be, because reason gives us too small a number of certain maxims, and our spirit is made to believe more. Just so, this abundant inclination to believe things profits prejudices, and false opinions succeed in supplying them.
Strato
And what need is there to throw oneself into error? Can't we suspend our judgment in doubtful affairs? Reason stops us, when it doesn't know which way to go.
R. of Urbino
That's very true. When reason stops, there's nothing it can do to keep from going astray except to not take a single step. As soon as the way forks in two, it stops short; but this is a violent state for the human spirit, which is always in movement and has to go on. Everyone is not able to doubt continuously, a person needs insight and strength to stay like that. Moreover, doubt doesn't act, and action is necessary for men.
Strato
Then a person must conserve the prejudices of customs when he needs to act, like other men; but he must mistrust the prejudices of his spirit when he wants to be wise.
R. of Urbino
It's better to conserve them all the time. You apparently forget the two responses of the old Samnite, whose nation asked him what they should do, when they had encircled the whole Roman army, their mortal enemy, and they were able to decide its destiny once and for all. The old man responded that they should kill every Roman. His advice seemed too hard and cruel, and the Samnites sent to him again to present him with all the inconveniences this would bring about. He responded that then they should let every Roman live, unconditionally. They followed neither the one nor the other counsel and ended up in bad straits. It is the same with prejudices. It's necessary to conserve them all or to exterminate them completely. Otherwise, the one's that you've mistrusted before will make you mistrust all the opinions that you have left. Then the misfortune of being tricked with a lot of things isn't recompensed by the pleasure of being ignorant; and you have neither the light of truth nor the agreeableness of error.
Strato
If there is no way to avoid the alternative that you propose, one must not hesitate to make one's choice. It's necessary to mistrust every prejudice.
R. of Urbino
But reason will chase every ancient opinion from our spirit, and will put nothing in their place. It will cause a type of emptiness. And who can bear that? No, no, with as little reason as men have, they have to have as many prejudices as they are accustomed to. Prejudices are the supplement to reason. Everything we lack from one, we'll find in the other.
Dialogue VI
That glory has more power over men than duty
Lucretia, Barbara Blomberg
B. Blomberg
You don't want to believe me, but nothing is truer. The Emperor Charles V and the Princess I mentioned formed an intrigue centered around me; but there was more. The Princess asked me to pretend to be the mother of a little prince who would be born, and I consented to do them the favor. You are so surprised! Haven't you heard that whatever merit a person has, he has to lift himself even above his merit, by the little esteem that he should give to it; that an intelligent person, for example, should be in a certain way even above his intelligence? For myself, I was above my virtue, which I had more of than I cared to.
Lucretia
Good, you're joking, a person can never have too much virtue.
B. Blomberg
Seriously, if someone wanted to send me back to the world under the condition that I be someone accomplished, I don't think I would accept. By being so perfect, I would bother a lot of people; I would always be obliged to show some fault or weakness to console the other people who were living.
Lucretia
Then to please women who didn't have much virtue, you gave up a little of yours.
B. Blomberg
I gave up the appearance a little, out of fear that they would consider me as their accuser before the public, had they found me more severe than they were.
Lucretia
They were very obliged to you, especially the Princess, who was very lucky to have found a mother for her children. Was there only one that you claimed to have?
B. Blomberg
No.
Lucretia
I'm amazed; she must have really profited from the convenience that she saw, because you didn't trouble yourself at all about your reputation.
B. Blomberg
I'm going to surprise you. The indifference that I had for my reputation ended up helping me. The truth was revealed despite all of my effort, and people figured out in the end that the Prince who passed for my son wasn't my son at all; people did me more justice than I would have asked for, and it seems that people wanted to recompense me for never having paraded my virtue, and for generously not having asked the public for the esteem that I deserved.
Lucretia
What a charming type of generosity; it is never necessary to indulge the public like that on earth.
B. Blomberg
You believe that! It is very bizarre, the public sometimes revolts against people who claim too imperiously that it's necessary to esteem them. You should know that better than anyone. There are people who have been offended by your too great ardor for glory; they did everything that they could not to esteem your death as much as it deserved esteem.
Lucretia
And how did they try to attack such a heroic action?
B. Blomberg
What do I know? They said that you died a little too late; that your death would have been worth a thousand times more if you had not waited for Tarquin to finish up; but apparently you didn't want to die for nothing, without people knowing why. In the end, it seems that people admitted your merit while regretting that they had to; and that they admitted mine with pleasure; perhaps this was because you ran after glory too heatedly; and that I let it come without even hoping it would.
Lucretia
Add to that that you did everything you could to prevent it from coming.
B. Blomberg
But is it nothing to be modest? I was modest enough not to want people to know about my virtue. You, on the contrary, put all of it that you had on display with pomp. You didn't even want to kill yourself unless your whole family was assembled. Isn't virtue content with the witness it has of itself? Doesn't it belong to a great soul to scorn the chimera of glory?
Lucretia
It's necessary to protect that chimera. You're speaking of a wisdom that would be too dangerous. This chimera is the most powerful thing in the world. It gives a soul to everyone, people prefer it to everything, and look at how it peoples the elysian fields; glory brings us down here more often than fever. I'm among the people it has brought here, I can talk.
B. Blomberg
Then you were as much a dupe as them, who died from that sickness that you mentioned; because the moment a person is down here, all the glory that is imaginable doesn't do him any good.
Lucretia
That is a secret for the place where we are; living people mustn't know it.
B. Blomberg
What bad would it do if they distrusted an idea that tricks them?
Lucretia
No one would do any more heroic actions.
B. Blomberg
Why? People would do them by knowing that it is their duty. That's a much nobler outlook. It is only founded on reason.
Lucretia
And that is exactly what makes it too weak. Glory is only founded on the imagination, and it is very strong. Reason itself approves that men must conduct themselves according to it; it knows too well that the help of the imagination is necessary. When Curtius was on the verge of sacrificing himself for his homeland by throwing himself fully armed and on his horse into the abyss that had opened near Rome, if someone had said, 'It is your duty to throw yourself into this abyss, but be sure that no one will ever talk about your action', I am very afraid that Curtius would have turned his horse around. For myself, I would never have killed myself if I were only presented with my duty. Why kill myself? I wouldn't have thought that my duty was harmed by what Tarquin did to me at all; rather, I would have thought that it could be satisfied with tears; but to make a great name, it was necessary to stab myself, and I stabbed myself.
B. Blomberg
Do you know what I think? I would prefer that no one did great actions, if they had to do them for a reason as false as glory.
Lucretia
You are being a little too hasty. At bottom, all duties are accomplished, even though people don't do them out of a regard for duty; all the great actions that must be done by men are done; in the end, the order that nature has established in the world is achieved; and if nature cannot obtain something necessary from our reason, she obtains it from our folly.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD MODERNS
Dialogue I
That there is something in vanity that can be good
Suleiman the Magnificent, Juliet of Gonzaga
Suleiman
Ah! Why is this the first time I am seeing you? Why did I lose all the trouble I took during my life to find you? I would have had the most beautiful woman of Italy in my harem; and now I only see a shadow without any traits, and which resembles all the others.
Juliet
I can't thank you enough for the love that you had for me based on my reputation for being beautiful. Your love itself more than redoubled that reputation, and I owe the pleasantest moments of my life to you. I always found myself filled with pleasure at night, until the pirate Barbarossa, whom you ordered to abduct me, thought he would surprise me in my bed, and made me flee the city hurriedly in disarray.
Suleiman
Why did you flee if you were happy that I was looking for you?
Juliet
I was delighted that someone wanted me, and even more that he couldn't catch me. Nothing flattered me more than to think that I was taking the happiness of the fortunate Suleiman away from him, and that he wanted to put me in his harem, a place so full of beautiful people; but I didn't want anything more. A harem is only pleasant to a woman who knows that people want to see her there, and not to one who is already closed up.
Suleiman
I see what you were afraid of very well; such a great number of rivals wouldn't have suited you. Perhaps you also were afraid that among so many lovely women, there were very many who were only ornaments and were never chosen.
Juliet
You attribute such beautiful feelings to me.
Suleiman
Then why would the harem have been so terrible?
Juliet
I would have been offended in the deepest way by the vanity of you Sultans, who, to display your grandeur, close up I-don't-know how many beautiful people, most of whom you never use and who are lost to the rest of the world. Moreover, do you think that someone can put up with a lover whose declarations of love are nonnegotiable orders and who always breaths with an air of absolute authority? No, I wasn't suited to a harem at all, you should have never searched for me, I would never have made you happy.
Suleiman
How can you be so sure?
Juliet
Because I know that you would never have made me happy.
Suleiman
I don't see how that makes any difference. What would it have mattered if I made you happy or not?
Juliet
What? You think that people can be happy in love with others who they don't make happy themselves; that there are, so to say, solitary pleasures, which have no need to communicate themselves, and which a person can enjoy without also giving them? Ah! Your feelings horrify well-made hearts.
Suleiman
I am a Turk, and it would be pardonable if I didn't have as much delicacy as was possible. However, it seems to me that I am not so wrong. Didn't you just very strongly condemn vanity?
Juliet
Yes.
Suleiman
And isn't it an act of vanity to want to be what makes others happy? Isn't it an insupportable pride to only consent to making me happy on the condition that I make you happy as well? A Sultan is more modest, he takes pleasure in a great number of very beautiful women who he never prides himself on having pleased. Don't laugh at all at this argument, it is more solid than it seems. Think about it, study the human heart, and you will find that this delicacy that you esteem so highly is only a certain type of proud repayment; a person doesn't want to owe anything.
Juliet
Well then, I conclude that vanity is necessary.
Suleiman
Do you still think so lowly of it now?
Juliet
Yes, the type I was talking about, but I strongly approve of this other type. Have you ever taken the trouble to imagine that the good qualities of a man are intimately tied to others that are bad, and that it would be dangerous to cure him of his faults?
Suleiman
But one doesn't know how they all are tied together. What, then, must one think about vanity?
Juliet
At a certain point, it causes vices; a little before that, it gives rise to virtues.
Dialogue II
On comedy
Paracelsus, Molière
Molière
If it weren't for your name, I would find you very charming. Paracelsus! A person would think that you were Greek or Roman, and would never guess that Paracelsus was a Swiss philosopher.
Paracelsus
I have made this name as illustrious as it is beautiful. My works are a great help to all those who would like to enter into the secrets of nature, and above all to those who would lift themselves even to knowledge of the Genies and the Inhabitants of the Elements.
Molière
I can easily concieve that those are true sciences. To know the men that one sees every day is nothing, there's no one who couldn't do it; but to know the Genies that one never sees, that's a whole other thing.
Paracelsus
Without a doubt. I have taught with great exactness what their nature is, what their employment, their inclinations, their different orders, and what power they have in the universe.
Molière
How lucky you are to have all these insights! Because it means that with even more reason you know everything regarding man perfectly, meanwhile many people can't even do that.
Paracelsus
Oh! Not even the most hidden Philosopher has succeeded in that.
Molière
I believe it. Then you don't have anything more to learn on the nature of the human soul, on it's functions and it's union with the body?
Paracelsus
Frankly, it's not possible to do away with every difficulty on this matter, but in the end, I know as much about it as philosophy can learn.
Molière
And you don't know more?
Paracelsus
No. Isn't that enough?
Molière
Enough? It's nothing at all. And you would try even so to skip over the men that you don't know, in order to learn about the Genies?
Paracelsus
The Genies have something about them that pricks one's natural curiosity much more.
Molière
Yes; but it isn't pardonable to think about them until you have nothing more to learn about men. A person would say that the human spirit has exhausted everything when he sees that it forms such sciences, which may not have any reality, and with which it muddles itself to it's own content; meanwhile it is certain that very real objects would give it, if it so wished, occupation enough.
Paracelsus
The spirit naturally neglects sciences that are too simple and short, in favor of those that are mysterious. Only on the latter would it be able to exercise all its activity.
Molière
So much worse for the spirit; what you claim is completely to its shame. The truth presents itself to it; but because it is simple, the spirit doesn't recognize it and takes ridiculous mysteries for it instead, for the sole reason that they are mysteries. I am persuaded that if most men were to see the order of the universe such as it is, where they would find neither the harmonies of numbers, nor the influence of the planets, nor fates attached to certain times or certain revolutions of the heavens, they would not be able to keep themselves from saying about this admirable order: 'What, it's only that?'
Paracelsus
You make fun of mysteries that you have not penetrated into, and which are in effect reserved for great men.
Molière
I esteem people who do not understand those mysteries at all much more than those who do; but unfortunately, nature has not made everyone incapable of understanding them.
Paracelsus
But you who decide with so much authority, what employment did you have during your life?
Molière
Employment very different from yours. You have studied the virtues of Genies; and I have studied the follies of men.
Paracelsus
Now there's a beautiful study. Don't people already know very well that men are subject to enough folly?
Molière
People know it in general and confusedly; but it's necessary to go into the details, and so people are surprised by the study of this science.
Paracelsus
And in the end, what use do you make of it?
Molière
I assemble in a certain place the greatest number of people that I can; and there, I make them all see that they are fools.
Paracelsus
You must make some terrible speeches to persuade them of such a truth.
Molière
Nothing is easier. One proves their folly to them without using great turns of eloquence, or much brooded over arguments. What they do is so ridiculous that it's only necessary to put as much in front of them, and at the same moment you see them burst with laughter.
Paracelsus
I understand, you wrote Comedies. For me, I don't understand the pleasure that people take in comedy. People laugh at their represented actions, but not at their actions themselves?
Molière
In order to laugh at things in the world, it's necessary to be in some measure outside of them; and Comedy does just that. It presents everything to you as a spectacle, as if you weren't taking any part in it.
Paracelsus
But don't people immediately re-enter all the situations they were making fun of, and begin to take part in them again?
Molière
There's no doubt about it. The other day to amuse myself, I made a fable on the subject. A young gosling was flying, with the bad taste that all the birds of this species have when they fly, and during this flight of a moment, which didn't lift him above the height of a stone, he insulted the rest that were just below him. 'Unfortunate animals', he said, 'I see you below me, and you all feign great airs!' The mockery was short; the gosling fell back down at the same time.
Paracelsus
What's the use of the reflections offered by Comedy, then, since it resembles the flight of this gosling and one immediately falls back into common folly?
Molière
It means a lot to be able to laugh at oneself; with that nature gives us a marvelous opportunity to escape being the dupes of ourselves. How many times doesn't it happen that at the same moment a part of us is doing something with ardor and haste, another part makes fun of it; and if there were need of it, one would find a third part that made fun of the first two together. Wouldn't a person say that man is made of different pieces brought together?
Paracelsus
I don't see that there is much matter in all this to exercise one's esprit. A few light reflections, a few pleasantries often badly founded, do not merit great esteem; but what efforts of meditation aren't necessary in order to treat more elevated subjects?
Molière
You are going back to your Genies, and I only know about my fools. However, although I have only ever worked on these topics so exposed to the eyes of everyone, I can predict that my comedies will live longer than your sublime works. Everything is subject to the changes of fashion; the subjects of the spirit are not above the destiny of clothes. I have seen I-don't-know-how-many books and genres of writing buried with their authors, just as among certain peoples, one buries the dead with everything that was most precious to them during their life. I know perfectly well what revolutions can occur in the Empire of Letters, and with all this, I guarantee the duration of my pieces. I know the reason well. Whoever wants to write about something immortal must write about fools.
Dialogue III
If one can be made happy by reason
Mary Stuart, David Riccio
D. Riccio
No, I will never console myself for my death.
M. Stuart
Meanwhile, it seems that it was good enough for a musician. The most eminent gentlemen from the court of Scotland, and even my husband, the King himself, conspired against you, and no Prince was ever shown more consideration or precaution in having his death planned.
D. Riccio
Such a magnificent death is not meant for an unfortunate lute player, whom poverty had sent from Italy to Scotland. It would have been better if you had let me pass my days sweetly in your band of musicians, rather than elevate me to the rank of Minister of State, which undoubtedly shortened my life.
M. Stuart
I never would have thought I would find you so unfeeling to the favor I showed you. Was it a small distinction to be received everyday at my table? Believe me, Riccio, a favor like that didn't hurt your reputation at all.
D. Riccio
Being received so often didn't hurt my reputation, but it killed me. Alas! I was dining with you tete a tete as usual, when I saw the King come in, accompanied by someone who must have been carefully chosen to murder me, since he was the most frightening Scotsman there ever was, and he looked like he had the quartan fever, which made him much more horrifying. I don't know how many times he cut through me, but as far as I can remember, I died from the fright of seeing him.
M. Stuart
I honored you memory so much that I buried you in the Tomb of the Kings of Scotland.
D. Riccio
I'm in the Tomb of the Kings of Scotland?
M. Stuart
Nothing is truer.
D. Riccio
That did me so much good that I didn't even realize it until you just told me. Oh lute, why did I have to leave you to amuse myself with governing a kingdom!
M. Stuart
You complain! Consider that my death was a thousand times more unfortunate than yours.
D. Riccio
Oh! You were born into a condition subject to great reversals of fortune; but me, I was born to die in my bed. Nature placed me in the best condition in the world; no wealth, a lot of obscurity, only a few choices, and the talent for playing the lute.
M. Stuart
Your lute always seizes your heart. Well so, you had a bad moment; but how many pleasant days didn't you enjoy before that? What would you have done if you had never been anything but a musician? You would have been very frustrated with such a mediocre fate.
D. Riccio
I would have looked for my happiness in myself.
M. Stuart
Come now, you're crazy. You've been spoiled since you died by idle reflections, or by the company of the philosophers down here. It's hard for men to find happiness in themselves.
D. Riccio
All that fails them is not believing that they can do it. A poet from my country wrote about an enchanted castle where lovers looked for each other ceaselessly and with a lot of haste and anxiety, constantly found each other, and never recognized each other. Men and happiness are in a similar case; it is in their thoughts, but they don't know anything about it; it presents itself to them a thousand times, and they go looking for it far away.
M. Stuart
Leave such jargon and the chimeras of philosophers. When nothing makes us happy, are we in a state to take the trouble of becoming happy by reasoning about our condition?
D. Riccio
Happiness would merit taking such trouble very much.
M. Stuart
It would do no good, it wouldn't be able to produce an effect; people cease to be happy as soon as they feel that they are making an effort to be. If someone felt the various parts of his body working to keep up his health, do you think he would be well? I maintain that he would be sick. Happiness is just like health, it has to be in men without them putting it there; and if there is a happiness that reason can produce, it resembles the health of people that is based on taking various medicines, and such health is always very weak and uncertain.
Dialogue IV
That one will never get tired of looking for the truth, no matter how unsuccessfully
The Third False Demetrius, Descartes
Descartes
I am familiar with the northern countries, at least as well as you are. I passed a good part of my life as a philosopher in Holland, and I finally died in Sweden, a philosopher more than ever.
The False Demetrius
I see from the description that you give me, that your life was very nice: it was only occupied with philosophy; I was never able to live in such tranquility.
Descartes
That was your own fault. What business did you have in claiming to be the Muscovite Tsar, and of going about it the way that you did? You tried to make people think you were the Prince Demetrius, to whom the throne belonged, and you already had the example of two previous false Demetriuses who took this name one after the other, were recognized for what they were, and who perished in misfortune. You should have taken the trouble to imagine some new way of tricking people; there was no sign that the way you chose, which was tried already, would succeed.
The False Demetrius
Just between us, the Muscovites are not a very subtle people. They have taken up the folly of claiming to resemble the ancient Greeks, but God knows what that's founded on.
Descartes
And yet, they were not so foolish as to be duped by three false Demetriuses in a row. I am sure that when you began trying to pass for the Prince, nearly all of them said with an air of disdain, "What, are there still more Demetriuses?"
The False Demetrius
At the same time, I built up a considerable following. The name Demetrius was loved, people all ran after this name. You know what people are like.
Descartes
And the failure of the other two Demetriuses didn't make you afraid?
The False Demetrius
On the contrary; it encouraged me. Shouldn't people have thought that only the true Demetrius would have dared to make a claim after what happened to the other two? Even then it would have taken audacity, however true of a Demetrius one might be.
Descartes
But suppose you were the first person to take the name: if you weren't truly Demetrius, how could you have the impudence to dare claiming that without any solid proofs?
The False Demetrius
But you, who ask me so many questions, and who are so difficult to content, how could you dare to set yourself up as the leader of a new philosophy that contains every truth unknown before you?
Descartes
I had found many things that were apparent enough to make me think they were true, and new enough to create a new sect.
The False Demetrius
And weren't you frightened by the example of so many philosophers before you, who with just as well-founded opinions as yours, were still recognized in the end as bad philosophers? I could name a prodigious number before you, and you could only name two false Demetriuses before me. I was only the third of my type, who tried to trick the Muscovites, but you were not even the thousandth of your type, who tried to make all men believe you.
Descartes
You knew very well that you were not the Prince Demetrius; but I only published what I believed was true, and I didn't believe anything without evidence. I only realized the mistakes in my philosophy since I came down here.
The False Demetrius
That's no matter; with your good faith you still needed a lot of audacity to claim so loudly that you had finally discovered the truth. People have already been tricked by so many others who claimed the same thing, that when a new philosopher presents himself, I'm shocked that everyone doesn't say with one voice, "What, are there still more philosophers and philosophies?"
Descartes
There is some reason in always being tricked by the promises of philosophers. Every once in a while they discover a few small truths that aren't very important, but which are amusing. With regard to the essentials of philosophy, I admit that they hardly move forward. I also think that sometimes people find the truth on considerable questions, but the misfortune is that they do not know what they have found; because philosophy (I think a dead man can say everything he wants to) resembles a certain game that children play, where one of them who is blindfolded runs after the others. If he catches someone, he has to name him correctly; otherwise, he has to let his catch go, and start running again. The same thing happens with the truth; we philosophers, although being blindfolded very well, sometimes catch it; but what happens? We cannot tell what it is we have caught, and from that moment it escapes us.
The False Demetrius
It is only too clear that the truth was not made for us. You will also find in the end that people will not look for it anymore, they will lose courage, and will do better things.
Descartes
I guarantee you that your prediction is incorrect. Men have an incredible courage for doing the things that they have once taken into their heads. Everyone thinks that what has been refused to everyone else is reserved for him. In twenty-four thousand years, there will be philosophers who will be proud of having destroyed all errors, whose ideas will reign for three thousand years, and after that there will be more people who think that it wasn't until them that people have opened their eyes.
The False Demetrius
What, there were infinite hazards in wanting to trick the Muscovites for the third time, and to want to trick men for the thirty-thousandth, there's none? Then are they greater dupes than the Muscovites?
Descartes
Yes, with regard to the truth. They are more in love with it than the Muscovites are with the name of Demetrius.
The False Demetrius
If I could start over, I wouldn't be a false Demetrius at all, I would be a philosopher; but what if people get tired of philosophy, and lose hope in being able to discover the truth? Because I would always be afraid of this.
Descartes
You had much more to fear when you were a Prince. Believe me that men will never become discouraged at all; this will never happen. Since the moderns haven't discovered the truth any more than the ancients, it is very just that they at least have as much hope in discovering it. This hope is always pleasant, however vain it may be. If the truth is given neither to the one nor the other, at least the pleasure of the same error is given to them both.
Dialogue V
How great things are achieved
Anne Boleyn, the Duchess of Valentinois
A. Boleyn
I marvel at your good fortune. It seems that your father S. Velier only committed his crime to give you good luck. He was condemned to be beheaded and you went to ask pardon from the King; to be pretty and to ask pardon from a young king is to have him grant it, and immediately you became the mistress of Francois I.
The Duchess
The greatest happiness that I had in all of that was to be able to make love out of the obligation that a girl has to save the life of her father. What I liked to do could be hidden easily under such a noble and favorable pretext.
A. Boleyn
But your tastes very soon showed themselves, because your love making lasted longer than the peril of your father.
The Duchess
No matter. In love, all the importance is in its beginnings. The world very well knows that whoever takes one step will take more; it's only a question of making this first step well. I like to think that my conduct was well-fitted to the situation that fortune presented me with, and that I will be remembered in history for being more than mediocrely clever. People marvel that the Constable of Montmorency was the minister and favorite of three Kings; but I was the mistress of two, and I claim that that is much more.
A. Boleyn
I have no reason to disagree that you were clever, but I think that I was more so. You made yourself loved for a long time, but I got myself married. A King will treat you with care so long as you touch his heart; that doesn't cost him anything. However, to be made Queen, he has to be desperate and without hope.
The Duchess
To get someone to marry you wasn't a big deal, but to always make myself loved was one. It is easy to aggravate love before a person has satisfied it; and it is very difficult for it not to be extinguished once a person has. In the end, you only have to always refuse a man with the same severity, and he will always find that you have greater attractions.
A. Boleyn
Since you press me so strongly with your arguments, I have to add that if someone married me, it wasn't for my virtue.
The Duchess
And as for me, if someone loved me with great constancy, it wasn't because of my great fidelity.
A. Boleyn
I tell you again that I was neither virtuous, nor reputed to be virtuous.
The Duchess
I already understood that, because I counted reputation for virtue itself.
A. Boleyn
It seems that all of your infidelities, which according to all appearances were done secretly, couldn't count in your favor. They cannot increase your glory. But when I began to be loved by the king of England, the public knew about all of my adventures, never kept them a secret, and I nevertheless triumphed over my reputation.
The Duchess
If I wanted to, I could prove to you that I cheated on Henry II in as clear a day as would do me honor; but I don't want us to get stuck on details. Lack of fidelity can either be hidden or made up for; but how to hide, how to make up for lack of youth? However, I achieved my ends without it. I was a coquette, I made people adore me; that's nothing, but I was also old. You were young and you let yourself be beheaded. Old grandmother that I was, I am sure that I had enough expertise to keep people from cutting off mine.
A. Boleyn
I admit that was the blemish of my life, let's not talk about it. I cannot counter anything against your age, which is your strong point. Still, it was definitely less difficult for you to disguise it than for me to do what I did. I really had to muddle the reason of the person who took me for his wife, but it was enough for your lover to be biased in your favor, and to accustom himself little by little to the wrinkling of your beauty and of the eyes of someone he always found beautiful.
The Duchess
You do not know men well. When one seems lovely to their eyes, one can seem like anything one wants to their intelligence, even virtuous, even though one may be less than nothing; the only difficulty is seeming lovely to their eyes for as long as one wants.
A. Boleyn
You've convinced me, I cede to you; but at least let me learn your secret for keeping yourself lovely in old age. I'm dead, and you can tell me without fearing that I'll profit by it.
The Duchess
In good faith, I don't know myself. A person nearly always does great things without knowing how one does them, and one is surprised that they happened. Ask Caesar how he made himself master of the world, perhaps he couldn't answer you easily.
A. Boleyn
The comparison is vain.
The Duchess
It is just. To be loved at my age, I needed as much luck as Caesar. What is even more fortunate is that afterwards people never fail to attribute designs and infallible secrets to those who have done great things like Caesar and I, which do us much more honor than we merited.
Dialogue VI
What the difference is between barbarians and civilized people
Fernando Cortez, Montezuma
F. Cortez
Admit the truth. You were pretty barbarous, all you Americans, when you mistook the Spaniards for men who descended from a world of fire because they had canons, and when you took their ships for great birds that flew on the sea.
Montezuma
I agree. However, I want to ask you if you think that the Athenians were civilized.
F. Cortez
What? They are the people who gave civilization to everyone else.
Montezuma
And what do you think about what the tyrant Pisistratus did to re-enter the citadel of Athens, from which he had been chased? Didn't he dress a woman up as Minerva? (Because people say that Minerva is the god who protected Athens.) Didn't he mount a chariot with this goddess of his own making, and go all throughout the city that way, with her holding his hand and crying to the Athenians; 'I am leading Pisistratus back to you, and I order to you receive him'; and didn't this people, which was so clever and spiritual, submit themselves to this tyrant to please Minerva, because she commanded it with her own mouth?
F. Cortez
How do you know so much about Athens?
Montezuma
Since I came down here, I've started studying history through the conversations I've had with various dead people. But in the end, you must agree that the Athenians were a little greater dupes than we were. We had never seen ships or canons, but they had seen women; and when Pisistratus tried to reduce them to obedience by means of a dressed-up goddess, it definitely showed that he thought less of them than you thought of us when you aimed your artillery.
F. Cortez
Every people falls into a vulgar trap at least once. One is surprised; the multitude carries away people with good sense. What can I tell you? There were circumstances surrounding that event that we cannot guess, and that would perhaps make us less surprised if we knew them.
Montezuma
But was it for an unknown but good reason that the Greeks at all times believed that knowledge of the future was contained in an underground hole which released it in exhalations? And by what artifice did someone persuade them that when the moon was eclipsed, they could make it come back by making a lot of noise, and why weren't there a small number of people who dared to whisper into each others ears that it was darkened by the shadow of the earth? I say nothing of the Romans, and the gods that they prayed would eat on their festival days, and of the Sacred Chickens, whose appetite decided everything in the capital of the world. In the end, you cannot reproach my Americans for their folly when I can show you many more examples from your country, and even embarrass you over the follies of the Greeks and Romans.
F. Cortez
Even with these follies though, the Greeks and Romans invented a perfection in all of the arts and sciences that you didn't have the smallest idea of.
Montezuma
We were very lucky not to know that there was science in the world; we may not have had enough reason to keep us from learning it. People are not always able to follow the example of the Greeks, who took so much care to preserve their culture after learning the sciences of their neighbors. As for the arts, Americans found ways to do without them that were more marvelous than the arts themselves in Europe. It is easy to invent histories when one knows how to write; but we hardly knew how to write at all and we invented histories. People can make bridges when they know how to build in the water; but it is very difficult to not know how to do that and to build bridges anyway. You must remember that the Spaniards found enigmatic things in our lands that they couldn't understand at all; I mean, for example, those enormous rocks which they couldn't imagine how people lifted so high without machines. What do you say to that? It seems to me at present that you haven't proven the advantages of Europe over America very well.
F. Cortez
There are as many proofs as there are differences between civilized and barbarous peoples. Civility ruled among us; force and violence could not be found; every power was moderated by justice, every war was started for legitimate reasons; and just look at how very scrupulous we were: we didn't wage war on your country until we made sure through rigorous examination that it actually belonged to us.
Montezuma
Doubtless, that's treating barbarians with more respect than they deserve; but I don't think you were any more civil and just with each other than you were scrupulous with us. Whoever would take the formalities away from Europe would make it very similar to America. Civility moderated all your decisions, dictated all your words, entered into all of your speeches, and restrained your actions; but it did not enter at all into your feelings; and all the justice that seemed to be displayed was only a matter of pretexts.
F. Cortez
I can't guarantee people's hearts. One only ever sees men from outside. An inheritor who loses a parent and receives great wealth wears black clothing. Is he afflicted with sadness? Apparently not. However, if he didn't wear black clothing, he would hurt reason.
Montezuma
I understand what you are saying; reason doesn't govern your country, but it at least protests that things should happen otherwise than they do; that inheritors, for example, should regret the loss of their parents; they hear this protest, and to appease it, they put on black clothing. Your formalities only show what would be right according to reason, if it had any power; and you do not do those things, but you let it be known that they should be done.
F. Cortez
Isn't that very much? Reason had so little power in your country that there wasn't even remembrance of it in your actions.
Montezuma
I remember how useless it was for certain Greeks that people have told me about down here to remember their homeland. They were living in Tuscany, a barbarous country to them, and little by little they took on its customs to such an extent that they forgot their own. However, they felt I-don't-know how much displeasure at seeing that they had become barbarous; and every year, on a certain day, they assembled together. They read their ancient laws in Greek, which they no longer followed, and which they hardly even understood; they cried and then they separated. After they left, they gaily started living again in the manner of the country. It was with them a question of Greek laws, and with you it is a question of reason. They knew that these laws were in the world and made mention of them, but lightly and fruitlessly. They nonetheless regretted in a way that their laws were no longer intact; but as for the reason that you abandon, you do not regret losing it at all. You took up the custom of recognizing it and then scorning it.
F. Cortez
At least when people recognize it better, there's more of a chance they will follow it.
Montezuma
Then that's the only reason we should cede to you? Ah! If only we had had vessels to discover your country, and had rigorously made sure that it belonged to us! We would have had as much a right to conquer it as you had to conquer us.
To Lucian,
In the Elysian Fields.
Illustrious man,
After having taken the idea of these dialogues from you, it is very just that I give you some homage. The author who has taught us most is the proper person to dedicate our work to; we can praise him sincerely and his example protects us. Someone may think that I was very bold to compete with you in a genre that you invented, but it seems to me that I would have been much bolder if I worked without a model. My hope is that your genre will make my ideas bearable; and I dare say that if my dialogues have some small success, they will do you even more honor than your own, since people will see that the idea was so pleasant that it didn't even have to be carried out well to delight them. I have built so much on your dialogues that only a portion of them would have been enough for me. I have left out Pluto, Charon, Cerberus, and the usual creatures in Hades. How angry I am that you exhausted the charming topics of the equality of the dead, the regret that some had for things in their life, the insincere firmness that philosophers affect when they die, the absurd misfortune of young people who die before the people they were hoping to inherit money from, and who they slaved over! But after all, since you invented these dialogues, it is reasonable that you got to choose the most charming topics. I have at least tried to imitate the goal that you proposed. All of your dialogues contain a moral, and I have made all of my dead people speak about morals; otherwise it would not have been worth the trouble of making them talk; living people would have been sufficient for saying things that are useless. Moreover, there is the convenience that one can imagine that the dead are people of great reflection, as much because of their experience as because of their leisure; and to their honor, one must believe that the dead think a little more than people usually do in life. They reason better than us up here because they regard things with more indifference and tranquility, and they want to reason about things because they don't have any self-interest. You made most of your dialogues so short that it seems you didn't think the dead were big talkers, and I easily agree with you. Since the dead are very insightful, they must quickly see to the bottom of a topic. I would even believe that they are so clear-sighted as to always agree with each other, and consequently hardly ever speak; because it seems to me that arguing belongs to us ignorant people who don’t know the truth, just as it belongs to blind people who do not know where they are going to bump into each other. But it would be hard to persuade oneself that the dead have changed their characters so much that they no longer feel differently from each other. Once someone in the world forms an idea of other people, he hardly ever changes it. Thus, I decided to make my dead people recognizable, at least the ones who are well known. You had no problem inventing characters and perhaps also some of the experiences your characters had, but I didn't need to do this. History furnished me with enough real dead people and true experiences for me not to have to invent them. You won't be surprised that dead people talk about things that happened long after their time; you who see yourself that everyday new dead people arrive to inform the old ones. I am sure that at present you know France very well through an infinite number of reports you have heard about it, and that you know that today France is to letters what Greece used to be. Above all, your illustrious translator, who made you speak our language so well, has surely not failed to tell you that Paris currently enjoys your works as much as Rome and Athens used to. Happy whoever can take your style as this great man did, and trap in his translation your delicate simplicity and your naive playfulness, which are so appropriate to dialogues! For myself, I cannot claim to have the glory of imitating you well; and I only want the glory of having known that one cannot imitate a more excellent model than you.
À Lucien,
Aux Champs Élysiens.
Illustre Mort,
Il est bien juste , qu'après avoir pris une idée qui vous appartient, je vous en rende quelque sorte d'hommage. L'auteur , dont on a tiré le plus de secours dans un livre, est le vrai héros de l'épître dédicatoire; c'est lui dont on peut publier les louanges avec sincérité, et qu'on doit choisir pour protecteur. Peut-être on trouvera que j'ai été bien hardi d'avoir osé travailler sur votre plan; mais il me semble que je l'eusse été encore davantage, si j'eusse travaillé sur un plan de mon imagination. J'ai quelque lieu d'espérer que le dessein qui est de vous, fera passer les choses qui sont de moi; et j'ose vous dire, que si par hasard mes dialogues avaient un peu de succès, ils vous feraient plus d'honneur que les vôtres mêmes ne vous en ont fait, puisqu'on verrait que cette idée est assez agréable pour n'avoir pas besoin d'être bien exécutée. J'ai fait tant de fond sur elle, que j'ai cru qu'une partie m'en pourrait suffire. J'ai supprimé Pluton, Caron, Cerbère, et tout ce qui est usé dans les enfers. Que je suis fâché que vous aviez épuisé toutes ces belles matières de l'égalité des morts, du regret qu'ils ont à la vie, de la fausse fermeté que les philosophes affectent de faire paraître en mourant, du ridicule malheur de ces jeunes gens qui meurent avant les vieillards dont ils croyaient hériter, et à qui ils faisaient la cour ! Mais après tout, puisque vous aviez inventé ce dessein , il était raisonnable que vous en prissiez ce qu'il y avait de plus beau. Du moins j'ai tâché de vous imiter dans la fin que vous vous étiez proposée. Tous vos dialogues renferment leur morale, et j'ai fait moraliser tous mes morts: autrement ce n'eût pas été la peine de les faire parler ; des vivans auraient suffi pour dire des choses inutiles: de plus, il y a cela de commode, qu'on peut supposer que les morts sont gens de grande réflexion, tant à cause de leur expérience que de leur loisir; et on doit croire, pour leur honneur, qu'ils pensent un peu plus qu'on ne fait d'ordinaire pendant la vie. Ils raisonnent mieux que nous des choses d'ici haut, parce qu'ils les regardent avec plus d'indifférence et plus de tranquillité, et ils veulent bien en raisonner, parce qu'ils y prennent un reste d'intérêt. Vous avez fait la plupart de leurs dialogues si courts, qu'il paraît que vous n'avez pas cru qu'ils fussent de grands parleurs, et je suis entré aisément dans votre pensée. Comme les morts ont bien de l'esprit, ils doivent voir bientôt le bout de toutes les matières. Je croirais même sans peine qu'ils devraient être assez éclairés pour convenir de tout les uns avec les autres , et par conséquent pour ne se parler presque jamais: car il me semble qu'il n'appartient de disputer qu'à nous autres ignorans , qui ne découvrons pas la vérité ; de même qu'il n'appartient qu'à des aveugles, qui ne voient pas le but où ils vont, de s'entre-beurter dans un chemin. Mais on ne pourrait pas se persuader ici que les morts eussent changé de caractères, jusqu'au point de n'avoir plus de sentiroens opposés. Quand on a une fois conçu dans le monde une opinion des gens , on n'en saurait revenir. Ainsi je me suis attaché à rendre les morts reconnaissables, du moins ceux qui sont fort connus. Vous n'avez pas fait de difficulté d'en supposer quelques-uns , et peut-être aussi quelques-unes des aventures que vous leur attribuez ; mais je n'ai pas eu besoin de privilége. L'histoire me fournissait assez de véritables morts, et d'aventures véritables, pour me dispenser d'emprunter aucun secours de la fiction. Vous ne serez pas surpris que les morts parlent de ce qui s'est passé long-temps après eux, vous qui les voyez tous les jours s'entretenir des affaires les uns des autres. Je suis sûr qu'à l'heure qu'il est, vous connaissez la France par une infinité de rapports qu'on vous en a faits, et que vous savez qu'elle est aujourd'hui pour les lettres, ce que la Grèce était autrefois; surtout votre illustre traducteur, qui vous a si bien fait parler notre langue, n'aura pas manqué de vous dire que Paris a eu pour vos ouvrages le même goût que Rome et Athènes avaient eu. Heureux qui pourrait prendre votre style comme ce grand homme le prit, et attraper dans ses expressions cette simplicité fine et cet enjouement naïf, qui sont si propres pour le dialogue! Pour moi, je n'ai garde de prétendre à la gloire de vous avoir bien imité; je ne veux que celle d'avoir bien su qu'on ne peut imiter un plus excellent modèle que vous.
In the Elysian Fields.
Illustrious man,
After having taken the idea of these dialogues from you, it is very just that I give you some homage. The author who has taught us most is the proper person to dedicate our work to; we can praise him sincerely and his example protects us. Someone may think that I was very bold to compete with you in a genre that you invented, but it seems to me that I would have been much bolder if I worked without a model. My hope is that your genre will make my ideas bearable; and I dare say that if my dialogues have some small success, they will do you even more honor than your own, since people will see that the idea was so pleasant that it didn't even have to be carried out well to delight them. I have built so much on your dialogues that only a portion of them would have been enough for me. I have left out Pluto, Charon, Cerberus, and the usual creatures in Hades. How angry I am that you exhausted the charming topics of the equality of the dead, the regret that some had for things in their life, the insincere firmness that philosophers affect when they die, the absurd misfortune of young people who die before the people they were hoping to inherit money from, and who they slaved over! But after all, since you invented these dialogues, it is reasonable that you got to choose the most charming topics. I have at least tried to imitate the goal that you proposed. All of your dialogues contain a moral, and I have made all of my dead people speak about morals; otherwise it would not have been worth the trouble of making them talk; living people would have been sufficient for saying things that are useless. Moreover, there is the convenience that one can imagine that the dead are people of great reflection, as much because of their experience as because of their leisure; and to their honor, one must believe that the dead think a little more than people usually do in life. They reason better than us up here because they regard things with more indifference and tranquility, and they want to reason about things because they don't have any self-interest. You made most of your dialogues so short that it seems you didn't think the dead were big talkers, and I easily agree with you. Since the dead are very insightful, they must quickly see to the bottom of a topic. I would even believe that they are so clear-sighted as to always agree with each other, and consequently hardly ever speak; because it seems to me that arguing belongs to us ignorant people who don’t know the truth, just as it belongs to blind people who do not know where they are going to bump into each other. But it would be hard to persuade oneself that the dead have changed their characters so much that they no longer feel differently from each other. Once someone in the world forms an idea of other people, he hardly ever changes it. Thus, I decided to make my dead people recognizable, at least the ones who are well known. You had no problem inventing characters and perhaps also some of the experiences your characters had, but I didn't need to do this. History furnished me with enough real dead people and true experiences for me not to have to invent them. You won't be surprised that dead people talk about things that happened long after their time; you who see yourself that everyday new dead people arrive to inform the old ones. I am sure that at present you know France very well through an infinite number of reports you have heard about it, and that you know that today France is to letters what Greece used to be. Above all, your illustrious translator, who made you speak our language so well, has surely not failed to tell you that Paris currently enjoys your works as much as Rome and Athens used to. Happy whoever can take your style as this great man did, and trap in his translation your delicate simplicity and your naive playfulness, which are so appropriate to dialogues! For myself, I cannot claim to have the glory of imitating you well; and I only want the glory of having known that one cannot imitate a more excellent model than you.
À Lucien,
Aux Champs Élysiens.
Illustre Mort,
Il est bien juste , qu'après avoir pris une idée qui vous appartient, je vous en rende quelque sorte d'hommage. L'auteur , dont on a tiré le plus de secours dans un livre, est le vrai héros de l'épître dédicatoire; c'est lui dont on peut publier les louanges avec sincérité, et qu'on doit choisir pour protecteur. Peut-être on trouvera que j'ai été bien hardi d'avoir osé travailler sur votre plan; mais il me semble que je l'eusse été encore davantage, si j'eusse travaillé sur un plan de mon imagination. J'ai quelque lieu d'espérer que le dessein qui est de vous, fera passer les choses qui sont de moi; et j'ose vous dire, que si par hasard mes dialogues avaient un peu de succès, ils vous feraient plus d'honneur que les vôtres mêmes ne vous en ont fait, puisqu'on verrait que cette idée est assez agréable pour n'avoir pas besoin d'être bien exécutée. J'ai fait tant de fond sur elle, que j'ai cru qu'une partie m'en pourrait suffire. J'ai supprimé Pluton, Caron, Cerbère, et tout ce qui est usé dans les enfers. Que je suis fâché que vous aviez épuisé toutes ces belles matières de l'égalité des morts, du regret qu'ils ont à la vie, de la fausse fermeté que les philosophes affectent de faire paraître en mourant, du ridicule malheur de ces jeunes gens qui meurent avant les vieillards dont ils croyaient hériter, et à qui ils faisaient la cour ! Mais après tout, puisque vous aviez inventé ce dessein , il était raisonnable que vous en prissiez ce qu'il y avait de plus beau. Du moins j'ai tâché de vous imiter dans la fin que vous vous étiez proposée. Tous vos dialogues renferment leur morale, et j'ai fait moraliser tous mes morts: autrement ce n'eût pas été la peine de les faire parler ; des vivans auraient suffi pour dire des choses inutiles: de plus, il y a cela de commode, qu'on peut supposer que les morts sont gens de grande réflexion, tant à cause de leur expérience que de leur loisir; et on doit croire, pour leur honneur, qu'ils pensent un peu plus qu'on ne fait d'ordinaire pendant la vie. Ils raisonnent mieux que nous des choses d'ici haut, parce qu'ils les regardent avec plus d'indifférence et plus de tranquillité, et ils veulent bien en raisonner, parce qu'ils y prennent un reste d'intérêt. Vous avez fait la plupart de leurs dialogues si courts, qu'il paraît que vous n'avez pas cru qu'ils fussent de grands parleurs, et je suis entré aisément dans votre pensée. Comme les morts ont bien de l'esprit, ils doivent voir bientôt le bout de toutes les matières. Je croirais même sans peine qu'ils devraient être assez éclairés pour convenir de tout les uns avec les autres , et par conséquent pour ne se parler presque jamais: car il me semble qu'il n'appartient de disputer qu'à nous autres ignorans , qui ne découvrons pas la vérité ; de même qu'il n'appartient qu'à des aveugles, qui ne voient pas le but où ils vont, de s'entre-beurter dans un chemin. Mais on ne pourrait pas se persuader ici que les morts eussent changé de caractères, jusqu'au point de n'avoir plus de sentiroens opposés. Quand on a une fois conçu dans le monde une opinion des gens , on n'en saurait revenir. Ainsi je me suis attaché à rendre les morts reconnaissables, du moins ceux qui sont fort connus. Vous n'avez pas fait de difficulté d'en supposer quelques-uns , et peut-être aussi quelques-unes des aventures que vous leur attribuez ; mais je n'ai pas eu besoin de privilége. L'histoire me fournissait assez de véritables morts, et d'aventures véritables, pour me dispenser d'emprunter aucun secours de la fiction. Vous ne serez pas surpris que les morts parlent de ce qui s'est passé long-temps après eux, vous qui les voyez tous les jours s'entretenir des affaires les uns des autres. Je suis sûr qu'à l'heure qu'il est, vous connaissez la France par une infinité de rapports qu'on vous en a faits, et que vous savez qu'elle est aujourd'hui pour les lettres, ce que la Grèce était autrefois; surtout votre illustre traducteur, qui vous a si bien fait parler notre langue, n'aura pas manqué de vous dire que Paris a eu pour vos ouvrages le même goût que Rome et Athènes avaient eu. Heureux qui pourrait prendre votre style comme ce grand homme le prit, et attraper dans ses expressions cette simplicité fine et cet enjouement naïf, qui sont si propres pour le dialogue! Pour moi, je n'ai garde de prétendre à la gloire de vous avoir bien imité; je ne veux que celle d'avoir bien su qu'on ne peut imiter un plus excellent modèle que vous.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD ANCIENTS
DIALOGUES
DE
MORTS ANCIENS
Dialogue I
What type of people cause the most stir in the world
Alexander the Great, Phryne
Dialogue I
Quels caractères font le plus de bruit
Alexandre, Phriné.
Phryne
You can ask all of the Thebans who were alive when I was. They will tell you that I offered to rebuild the Walls of Thebes that you ruined at my own expense, provided that they write this inscription on them: 'Alexander the Great knocked these walls down, but the Courtesan Phryne rebuilt them'.
Vous pouvez le savoir de tous les Thébains qui ont vécu de mon temps. Ils vous diront que je leur offris de rebâtir à mes depens les murailles de Thèbes , que vous aviez ruinées , pourvu que l'on y mît cette inscription : Alexandre-le-Grand avait abattu ces murailles , mais la courtisane Phriné les a relevées.
Alexander
Then you were afraid that posterity wouldn't know that you were a courtesan?
Vous aviez donc grand peur que les siècles à venir n'ignorassent quel métier vous aviez fait?
Phryne
I really excelled as one; and every extraordinary person, whatever his or her profession may be, goes crazy over monuments and inscriptions.
J'y avais excellé , et toutes les personnes extraordinaires , dans quelques professions que ce puisse être , ont la folie des monumens et des inscriptions.
Alexander
It's true that Rhodope had already done the same thing. The money she made from with her beauty allowed her to build one of those Egyptian pyramids that are still standing; and the other day I remember her talking to certain dead French women who claimed that they were very beautiful, and who began crying, saying that in the country and century they lived in, beautiful women couldn't make large enough fortunes to build pyramids.
Il est vrai que Rhodope l'avait déjà eue avant vous. L'usage qu'elle fit de sa beauté, la mit en état de bâtir une de ces fameuses pyramides d'Egypte qui sont encore sur pied; et je me souviens que comme elle en parlait l'autre jour à de certaines mortes françaises, qui prétendaient avoir été fort aimables, ces ombres se mirent à pleurer , en disant que dans les pays et dans les siècles ou elles venaient de vivre, les belles ne faisaient plus d'assez grandes fortunes pour élever des pyramides.
Phryne
But I had this advantage over Rhodope, that by rebuilding the walls of Thebes I put myself on a par with you, who were the greatest conqueror in the world, and I showed that my beauty could repair the destruction caused by your valor.
Mais moi, j'avais cet avantage par-dessus Rhodope , qu'en rétablissant les murailles de Thèbes , je me mettais en parallèle avec vous, qui aviez été le plus grand conquérant du monde, et que je faisais voir que ma beauté avait pu réparer les ravages que votre valeur avait faits.
Alexander
There we see two things, you and myself, that would definitely never enter into a comparison with each other. Are you that proud of having pleased so many men?
Voilà deux choses, qui assurément n'étaient jamais entrées en comparaison l'une avec l'autre. Vous vous savez donc bon gré d'avoir eu bien des galanteries?
Phryne
And you, are you that satisfied with having destroyed the better part of the world? Too bad there wasn't a Phryne in every city you ruined! There would no longer be any sign of your violence.
Et vous, vous êtes fort satisfait d'avoir désolé la meilleure partie de l'univers? Que ne s'est-il trouvé une Phriné dans chaque ville que vous avez ruinée! Il ne serait resté aucune marque de vos fureurs.
Alexander
If I could live again, I would still choose to be a famous conqueror.
Si j'avais à revivre , je voudrais être encore un illustre conquérant.
Phryne
And I a beautiful conqueress. Men naturally obey beauty, and valor only forces them against their will. Beauty rule over every country, while kings and even conquerors don't. But to better convince you, your father Phillip was very valiant, and you were too; however, neither of you could inspire any fear in the orator Demosthenes, who spent his whole life haranguing against you both; meanwhile another Phryne than I (because the name was lucky) was on the verge of losing a very important trial, when her lawyer, having exhausted all his eloquence for her, ripped open the part of her dress that covered her breasts, and immediately her beauty was seen, and the judges who were ready to condemn her changed their minds. Thus, the entire stir caused by you weapons over a long series of years couldn't keep an orator quiet, but the qualities of someone who was beautiful corrupted the severe Areopagus in a single moment.
Et moi, une aimable conquérante. La beauté a un droit naturel de commander aux hommes , et la valeur n'en a qu'un droit acquis par la force. Les belles sont de tous pays, et les rois mêmes ni les conquérans n'en sont pas. Mais pour vous convaincre encore mieux, votre père Philippe était bien vaillant, vous l'étiez beaucoup aussi; cependant vous ne pûtes , ni l'un ni l'autre, inspirer aucune crainte à l'orateur Démosthène , qui ne fit, pendant toute sa vie , que haranguer contre vous deux : et une autre Phriné que moi (car le nom est heureux) étant sur le point de perdre une cause fort importante , son avocat, qui avait épuisé vainement toute son éloquence pour elle , s'avisa de lui arracher un grand voile qui la couvrait en partie; et aussitôt, à la vue des beautés qui parurent , les juges qui étaient prêts à la condamner, changèrent d'avis. C'est ainsi que le bruit de vos armes ne put, pendant un grand nombre d'années faire taire un orateur, et que les attraits d'une belle personne corrompirent en un moment tout le sévère aréopage.
Alexander
Despite the example of this other Phryne, I do not think that Alexander the Great was less powerful. It would be a great pity if...
Quoique vous ayez appelé encore une Phriné à votre secours , je ne crois pas que le parti d'Alexandre en soit plus faible. Ce serait grande pitié , si...
Phryne
I know what you're going to say. Greece, Asia, Persia, India, all that was a great display. However, if I took away what wasn't due to you; if I gave your soldiers, captains, and chance itself what belonged to them, do you think that you would have nearly as much glory? However, a beauty doesn't share the honor of her conquests with anyone; she owes everything to herself. Believe me, it's a pretty situation to be a beautiful woman.
Je sais ce que vous m'allez dire. La Grèce, l'Asie, la Perse , les Indes, tout cela est un bel étalage. Cependant, si je retranchais de votre gloire ce qui ne vous en appartient pas; si je donnais à vos soldats, à vos capitaines , au hasard même la part qui leur en est due, croyez-vous que vous n'y perdissiez guère ? Mais une belle ne partage avec personne l'honneur de ses conquêtes; elle ne doit rien qu'à elle-même. Croyez-moi, c'est une jolie condition que celle d'une jolie femme.
Alexander
It seems that you're very convinced. But do you think that courtesans are really as powerful as you were?
Il a paru que vous en avez été bien persuadée. Mais pensez-vous que ce personnage s'étende aussi loin que vous l'avez poussé.
Phryne
No, no, that's true. I admit that I went far, far beyond a typical beautiful woman, but you also went far, far beyond a typical great man. You and I made too many conquests. If I had only had two or three lovers, that would have been in order and there would be nothing to criticize; but to have had enough to rebuild the walls of Thebes, that's doing much more than is necessary. On the other hand, if you had only conquered Greece, the neighboring islands, and maybe a small part of Asia Minor, and created a State, nothing would have been more understandable or reasonable; but to always run about without knowing where, to always capture cities without knowing why, and to always execute something without having any plan, that is what hasn't pleased many people who have good sense.
Non, non, car je suis de bonne foi. J'avoue que j'ai extrêmement outré le caractère de jolie femme; mais vous avezoutré aussi celui de grand homme. Vous et moi, nous avons fait trop de conquêtes. Si je n'avais eu que deux ou trois galanteries tout au plus, cela était dans l'ordre, et il n'y avait rien à redire; mais d'en avoir assez pour rebâtir les murailles de Thèbes, c'était aller beaucoup plus loin qu'il ne fallait. D'autre côté , si vous n'eussiez fait que conquérir la Grèce, les îles voisines, et peut-être encore quelque petite partie de l'Asie mineure , et vous en composer un état, il n'y avait rien de mieux entendu ni de plus raisonnable: mais de courir toujours sans savoir où, de prendre toujours des villes sans savoir pourquoi, et d'exécuter toujours sans avoir aucun dessein; c'est ce qui n'a pas plu à beaucoup de personnes bien sensées.
Alexander
Let those sensible people say what they like. If I had used my valor and fortune that wisely, nearly no one would speak about me.
Que ces personnes bien sensées en disent tout ce qu'il leur plaira. Si j'avais usé si sagement de ma valeur et de ma fortune, on n'aurait presque point parlé de moi.
Phryne
Nor about me, if I had used my beauty so wisely. When someone only wants to cause a stir in the world, the proper type of personality isn't one that is very reasonable.
Ni de moi non plus, si j'avais usé trop sagement de ma beauté. Quand on ne veut que faire du bruit, ce ne sont pas les caractères les plus raisonnables qui y sont les plus propres.
Dialogue II
On being delicate
Milon, Smindiride
Dialogue II
Sur la delicatesse
Milon, Smindiride
Smindiride
So you're really proud, Milon, of carrying a cow on your shoulders to the Olympic Games?
Te es donc bien glorieux, Milon , d'avoir porté un bœuf sur tes épaules aux jeux olympiques?
Milon
It was definitely a beautiful thing to do. All Greece praised me, and honor even spread to my country Croton, which has produced so many brave athletes. On the other hand, your city Sibaris will always be derided for the effeminacy of it's inhabitants, who banished roosters fearing the roosters might wake them up, and who ask people to eat for a year before dinner is served, in order to have time to make it as daintily as they want.
Assurément l'action fut fort belle. Toute la Grèce y applaudit, et l'honneur s'en répandit jusques sur la ville de Crotone ma patrie, d'où sont sortis une infinité de braves athlètes. Au contraire, ta ville de Sibaris sera décriée à jamais par la mollesse de ses habitans, qui avaient banni les coqs, de peur d'en être éveillés, et qui priaient les gens à manger un an avant le jour du repas, pour avoir le loisir de le faire aussi délicat qu'ils le voulaient.
Smindiride
You make fun of Sibarites; but you, you vulgar Crotonate, don't you think that priding yourself on carrying a cow makes you resemble it somewhat?
Tu te moques des Sibarites; mais toi, Crotoniate grossier, crois-tu que se vanter de porter un bœuf, ce ne soit pas se vanter de lui ressembler beaucoup?
Milon
And you, do you resemble a man, when you complain that you didn't sleep all night because among the rose petals that you sprinkled over your bed, there was one that you accidentally ripped in two?
Et toi, crois-tu avoir ressemblé à un homme, quand tu t'es plaint d'avoir passé une nuit sans dormir, à cause que parmi les feuilles de roses dont ton lit était semé, il y en avait eu une sous toi qui s'était pliée en deux?
Smindiride
It's true that I was so delicate, but why does that seem so strange to you?
Il est vrai que j'ai eu cette délicatesse; mais pourquoi te parait-elle si étrange?
Milon
How could it not seem strange to me?
Et comment se pourrait-il qu'elle ne me le parût pas?
Smindiride
What! Haven't you ever seen a lover who was covered with favors by his mistress, who he had done a favor, be troubled on account of his good fortune, worrying that it was only gratitude and not affection that was in the heart of his beauty?
Quoi ! n'as-tu jamais vu quelque amant, qui étant comblé des faveurs d'une maîtresse à qui il a rendu des services signalés, soit troublé dans la possession de ce bonheur, par la crainte qu'il a que la reconnaissance n'agisse dans le cœur de la belle, plus que l'inclination?
Milon
No, I've never seen it. But what of it?
Milon. Non , je n'en ai jamais vu. Mais quand cela serait?
Smindiride
And have you never heard the speech of some conqueror who just returned from a glorious expedition, finding himself little satisfied with his triumphs because fortune had too much a part in them as opposed to his valor and conduct, his designs having succeeded on false measures and bad impressions?
Et n'as-tu jamais entendu parler de quelque conquerant , qui, au retour d'une expédition glorieuse se trouvât peu satisfait de ses triomphes, parce que la fortune y aurait eu plus de part que sa valeur, ni sa conduite, et que ses desseins auraient réussi sur des mesures fausses et mal prises?
Milon
No, I've never heard such speech. But again, what do you want to conclude?
Non , je n'en ai point entendu parler. Mais encore une fois , qu'en veux-tu conclure?
Smindiride
That this lover, and this conqueror, and in general nearly all men, although sleeping on flowers are not able to sleep if there is a single petal ripped in two. Almost nothing is needed to spoil pleasures. This is the bed of roses, where it is very difficult for all the petals to stay together without any being ripped; meanwhile, a tear in a single one is enough to hurt us very much.
Que cet amant et ce conquérant, et généralement presque tous les hommes, quoique couchés sur des fleurs, ne sauraient dormir, s'il y en a une seule feuille pliée en deux. Il ne faut rien pour gâter les plaisirs. Ce sont des lits de roses, où il est bien difficile que toutes les feuilles se tiennent étendues, et qu'aucune ne se plie; cependant le pli d'une seule suffit pour incommoder beaucoup.
Milon
I'm not very knowledgeable about these things, but it seems to me that you, the lover, and the conqueror that you mentioned, and everyone like you all, are really wrong to be that way. Why become so delicate?
Je ne suis pas fort savant sur ces matières-là; mais il me semble que toi, et l'amant et le conquérant que tu supposes, et tous tant que vous êtes, vous avez extrêmement tort. Pourquoi vous rendez-vous si délicats?
Smindiride
Ah! Milon, people with esprit are not Crotonates like you, but are Sibarites more refined than I was.
Ah! Milon, les gens d'esprit ne sont pas des Crotoniates comme toi ; mais ce sont des Sibarites encore plus raffinés que je n'étais.
Milon
I see how it is. People with esprit must have more pleasures than they need, and they become so delicate to reduce what they have too much of. They want to be sensitive to the smallest discomforts because they just find too many things pleasing, and so in that light I think they're right.
Je vois bien ce que c'est. Les gens d'esprit ont assurément plus de plaisirs qu'il ne leur en faut, et ils permettent à leur délicatesse d'en retrancher ce qu'ils ont de trop. Ils veulent bien être sensibles aux plus petits désagrémens, parce qu'il y a d'ailleurs assez d'agrémens pour eux, et sur ce pied-là, je trouve qu'ils ont raison.
Smindiride
That's not how it is at all. People with esprit never have more pleasures than they need.
Ce n'est point du tout cela. Les gens d'esprit n'ont point plus de plaisir qu'il ne leur en faut.
Milon
Then they are crazy to make themselves so delicate.
Ils sont donc fous de s'amuser à être si délicats.
Smindiride
That’s the unfortunate thing. Being delicate is entirely worthy of men; it is only produced by the good qualities of their spirit and heart; they are grateful for having these and try to acquire them if they don't. However, being delicate lessens a person's pleasures, and one doesn't have too many. It's the reason people don't feel all the power of their pleasures, while they aren't too powerful to begin with. How men are to be pitied! Their natural condition offers few pleasant things, and their reason accustoms them to enjoy even fewer.
Voilà le malheur. La délicatesse est tout-à-fait digne des hommes; elle n'est produite que par les bonnes qualités et de l'esprit et du cœur: on se sait bon gré d'en avoir; on tâche à en acquérir, quand on n'en a pas. Cependant la délicatesse diminue le nombre des plaisirs, et on n'en a point trop; elle est cause qu'on les sent moins vivement, et d'eux-mêmes ils ne sont point trop vifs. Que les hommes sont à plaindre! leur condition naturelle leur fournit peu de choses agréables, et leur raison leur apprend à en goûter encore moins.
Dialogue III
On the affair that Virgil falsely attributed to Dido
Dido, Stratonice
Dialogue III
Sur l'intrigue que Virgile attribue faussement à Didon
Didon, Stratonice
Dido
Alas! My poor Stratonice, how unfortunate I am! You know how I lived. I was so faithful to my first husband that I burned myself alive to avoid taking a second. However, I have not been able to escape slander. It pleased a poet named Virgil to change a prude as severe as myself into a young coquette who let herself be charmed by the handsome face of a foreigner on the first day that she saw him. My whole story was reversed. It's true that he kept in my funeral pyre. But can you guess why he said I threw myself into it? Not out of fear of having to take a second husband, but out of despair that this foreigner abandoned me.
Hélas! Ma pauvre Stratonice, que je suis malheureuse! Vous savez comme j'ai vécu. Je gardai une fidélité si exacte à mon premier mari, que je me brûlai toute vive, plutôt que d'en prendre un second. Cependant je n'ai pu être à couvert de la médisance. Il a plu à un poète, nommé Virgile, de changer une prude aussi sévère que moi, en une jeune coquette , qui se laisse charmer de la bonne mine d'un étranger, dès le premier jour qu'elle le voit. Toute mon histoire est renversée. A la vérité, le bûcher où je fus consumée m'est demeuré; mais devinez pourquoi je m'y jette. Ce n'est plus de peur d'être obligée à un second mariage;c'est que je suis au désespoir de ce que cet étranger m'abandonne.
Stratonice
In good faith, this can have very dangerous consequences. There will hardly be any more women who will want to burn themselves out of conjugal fidelity, if after they are dead a poet has the liberty to say anything he wants to about them. But perhaps your Virgil wasn't so incorrect. Perhaps he uncovered an affair that you had when you were alive that you hoped wouldn't be discovered. What do I know? I cannot respond for you simply on the basis of your funeral pyre.
De bonne foi, cela peut avoir des conséquences très-dangereuses. Il n'y aura plus guère de femmes qui veuillent se brûler par fidélité conjugale, si après leur mort un poète est en liberté de dire d'elles tout ce qu'il voudra. Mais peut-être votre Virgile ri'a-t-il pas eu si grand tort. Peut-être a-t-il démêlé dans votre vie quelqu'intrigue que vous espériez qui ne seroit pas connue. Que sait-on? je ne voudrois pas répondre de vous sur la foi de votre bûcher.
Dido
If the gallantry that Virgil attributed to me had any resemblance to truth, I would consent to being suspected; but he said that my lover was Aeneas, a man who died three hundred years before I came into the world.
Si la galanterie que Virgile m'attribue avoit quelque vraisemblance , je consentirois que l'on me soupçonnât; mais il me donne pour amant, Enée, un homme qui étoit mort trois cent ans avant que je fusse au monde.
Stratonice
Now that's something. However, Aeneas and you both seemed extremely suited to one another. You both were forced to abandon your homelands; you both sought your fortune in a foreign country; he was a widower, you a widow; that's a lot of similarities. It's true that you were born three hundred years after him; but Virgil saw so many reasons to place you together, that he didn't think the three hundred years that separated you were a great concern.
Ce que vous dites-là est quelque chose. Cependant Enée et vous , vous paroissiez extrêmement être le fait l'un de l'autre. Vous aviez été tous deux contraints d'abandonner votre patrie; vous cherchiez fortune tous deux dans des pays étrangers; il étoit veuf, vous étiez veuve: voilà bien des rapports. Il est vrai que vous êtes née trois cent ans après lui; mais Virgile a vu tant de raisons pour vous assortir ensemble, qu'il a cru que les trois cent années qui vous séparaient n'étoient pas une affaire.
Dido
What kind of argument is that? What! three hundred years is not always three hundred years, and despite them two people can still meet and fall in love?
Quel raisonnement est-ce-là ? Quoi! trois cent ans ne sont pas toujours trois cent ans; et malgré cet obstacle, deux personnes peuvent se rencontrer et s'aimer ?
Stratonice
Oh! On this point Virgil was very subtle. He was definitely a man of the world; he wanted to show that in love affairs, one mustn’t judge according to appearances, and that the people who show the least signs of one are often the most involved.
Oh! c'est sur ce point que Virgile a entendu finesse. Assurément il étoit homme du monde; il a voulu faire voir qu'en matière de commerces amoureux, il ne faut pas juger sur l'apparence, et que tous ceux qui en ont le moins, sont bien souvent les plus vrais.
Dido
I think that he just attacked my reputation in order to put a beautiful episode into his work.
J'avois bien affaire qu'il attaquât ma réputation, pour mettre ce beau mystère dans ses ouvrages.
Stratonice
But what! Did he ridicule you? Did he say impertinent things about you?
Mais quoi ! vous a-t-il tournée en ridicule ? vous a-t-il fait dire des choses impertinentes ?
Dido
Not at all. He recited his poem to me down here, and the whole bit where I appear is definitely divine, even the slander. I am beautiful in it, I say very beautiful things about my supposed passion; and if Virgil were obliged to represent me in the Aeneid as an honest woman, the Aeneid would lose a great deal.
Rien moins. Il m'a récité ici son poème, et tout le morceau où il me fait paraître est assurément divin, à la médisance près. J'y suis belle; j'y dis de très belles choses sur ma passion prétendue; et si Virgile étoit obligé à me reconnoître dans l'Enéide pour femme de bien, l'Enéide y perdrait beaucoup.
Stratonice
Then why are you complaining? He said you had a love affair that you didn't; look at that great misfortune! But in recompense, he gave you beauty and esprit, which you may not have had.
De quoi vous plaignez-vous donc? On vous donne une galanterie que vous n'avez pas eue: voilà un grand malheur! Mais en récompense , on vous donne de la beauté et de l'esprit, que vous n'aviez peut-être pas.
Dido
What a consolation!
Quelle consolation!
Stratonice
I don't know about you, but it seems to me that most women prefer people to slander their virtue a little, rather than their esprit or their beauty. As for myself, I was of this last humor. A painter who was at the court of my husband, the King of Syria, was unhappy with me; and to avenge himself, he painted me in the arms of a soldier. He exposed his painting and immediately fled. My subjects, zealous for my glory, wanted to publicly burn the painting; but since I was painted admirably well, and was very beautiful, although the attitudes people showed me were not advantageous to my virtue, I kept it from being burned, and I recalled the painter, whom I pardoned. If you would trust me, you would do the same with respect to Virgil.
Je ne sais comment vous êtes faite ; mais la plupart des femmes aiment mieux, ce me semble, qu'on médise un peu de leur vertu, que de leur esprit ou de leur beauté. Pour moi, j'étois de cette humeur-là. Un peintre, qui étoit à la cour du roi de Syrie mon mari, fut mal content de moi: et pour se venger, il me peignit entre les bras d'un soldat. Il exposa son tableau, et prit aussitôt la fuite. Mes sujets, zélés pour ma gloire, vouloient briller ce tableau publiquement; mais comme j'y étois peinte admirablement bien, et avec beaucoup de beauté, quoique les attitudes qu'on m'y donnoit ne fussent pas avantageuses à ma vertu, je défendis qu'on le brûlât, et fit revenir le peintre, à qui je pardonnai. Si vous m'en croyez, vous en userez de même à l'égard de Virgile.
Dido
That would be good, if the greatest merit of a woman was to be beautiful or to have esprit.
Cela seroit bon, si le premier mérite d'une femme éteit d'être belle, ou d'avoir de l'esprit.
Stratonice
I won't decide at all what her greatest merit is, but as far as what usually happens is concerned, the first question that people ask about a woman that they don't know is, 'Is she beautiful?' The second is, 'Does she have esprit?' It rarely happens that they ask a third question.
Je ne décide point quel est ce premier mérite : mais dans l'usage ordinaire, la première question qu'on fait sur une femme que l'on ne connoît point, c'est, est-elle belle? la seconde, a-t-elle de l'esprit? Il arrive rarement qu'on fasse une troisième question.
Dialogue IV
On Philosophy
Anacreon, Aristotle
Dialogue IV
Sur la philosophie
Anacréon , Aristote
Aristotle
I would never have believed that a writer of chansons would have dared to compare himself with a philosopher of as great a reputation as myself.
J'e n'eusse jamais cru qu'un faiseur de chansonnettes eût osé se comparer à un philosophe d'une aussi grande réputation que moi.
Anacreon
You do make the name of philosophy ring on high. I however, with my little chansons, have never left off being called the wise Anacreon, and it seems to me that being a philosopher is not worth as much as being wise.
Vous faites sonner bien haut le nom de philosophe: mais moi, avec mes chansonnettes, je n'ai pas laissé d'être appellé le sage Anacréon; et il me semble que le titre de philosophe ne vaut pas celui de sage.
Aristotle
Those who attribute that quality to you don't think too much before they speak. What have you ever done to merit it?
Ceux qui vous ont donné cette qualité-là, ne songeoient pas trop bien à ce qu'ils disoient. Qu'aviez-vous jamais fait pour la mériter ?
Anacreon
All I have done is sing, and dance, and be full of love; and the marvelous thing is that people have called me wise at this price, while they only call you a philosopher, who have taken infinite pains. For, how many nights haven't you passed in poking holes in the ticklish questions of dialectics? How many huge volumes haven't you composed on obscure subjects that you may not even understand yourself?
Je n'avois fait que boire, que chanter, qu'être amoureux; et la merveille est qu'on m'a donné le nom de sage à ce prix, au lieu qu'on ne vous a donné que celui de philosophe, qui vous a coûté des peines infinies. Car combien avez-vous passé de nuits à éplucher les questions épineuses de la dialectique? Combien âvez-vous composé de gros volumes sur des matières obscures, que vous n'entendiez peut-être pas bien vous-même?
Aristotle
I admit that you have taken a more comfortable path to wisdom, and that it took a lot of cleverness to find a way to acquire more glory with your lute and bottle than great men do with their years and travails.
J'avoue que vous avez pris un chemin plus commode pour parvenir à la sagesse, et qu'il falloit être bien habile, pour trouver moyen d'acquérir plus de gloire avec votre luth et votre bouteille, que les plus grands hommes n'en ont acquis par leurs veilles et par leurs travaux.
Anacreon
You make fun of me; but I maintain that it is more difficult to drink and sing as I have done, than to philosophize as you have. To sing and drink like me, it is necessary to free a soul from violent passions, to only aspire to what depends on oneself, to be disposed to take all time as it comes; finally, there are all the little things of life to consider that weren't previously. If there is not any great dialectic in all this, it is nevertheless only with difficulty that someone could achieve it without being exhausted. But it takes less to be a philosopher as you have been. One is not obliged to give up ambition or avarice; makes oneself an agreeable entrance into the court of Alexander the Great, acquires presents of five hundred thousand ecus, which are not spent entirely on physical experiments as intended by the donator; and in a word, this sort of philosophy leads to things sufficiently opposed to philosophy.
Vous prétendez railler; mais je vous soutiens qu'il est plus difficile de boire et de chanter comme j'ai chanté et comme j'ai bu, que de philosopher comme vous avez philosophé. Pour chanter et pour boire comme moi, il faudrait avoir dégagé son ame des passions violentes, n'aspirer plus à ce qui ne dépend pas de nous, s'être disposé à prendre toujours le temps comme il viendroit: enfin il y auroit auparavant bien de petites choses à régler chez soi; et quoiqu'il n'y ait pas grande dialectique à tout cela, on a pourtant de la peine à en venir à bout. Mais on peut à moins de frais philosopher comme vous avez fait. On n'est point obligé à se guérir, ni de l'ambition, ni de l'avarice: on se fait une entrée agréable à la cour du grand Alexandre; on s'attire des présens de cinq cent mille écus, que l'on n'emploie pas entièrement en expériences de physique, selon l'intention du donateur; et en un mot, cette sorte de philosophie mène à des choses assez opposées à la philosophie.
Aristotle
You must have heard a lot of slander about me in the underworld here; but after all, man is only man because he reasons, and nothing is more beautiful than to teach others how to study nature, and to look into all the enigmas that she poses us.
Il faut qu'on vous ait fait ici-bas bien des médisances de moi: mais après tout, l'homme n'est homme que par la raison, et rien n'est plus beau que d'apprendre aux autres comment ils s'en doivent servir à étudier la nature , et à développer toutes ces énigmes qu'elle nous propose.
Anacreon
Observe how men reverse the use of everything. Philosophy is in itself an admirable thing and can be very useful; but because it is inconvenient when it mixes in people's affairs, and advises them to rule their passions, they start looking into how the planets are arranged in the sky, measuring their movements, or even walking all over the earth to examine everything they see there. Finally, they occupy themselves with the farthest thing from them as possible. But while they want to be philosophers so cheaply, they empty the name, and call people by it who only look into natural causes.
Voilà comme les hommes renversent l'usage de tout. La philosophie est en elle-même une chose admirable, et qui leur peut être fort utile: mais parce qu'elle les incommoderoit, si elle se mêloit de leurs affaires, et si elle demeuroit auprès d'eux à régler leurs passions, ils l'ont envoyée dans le ciel arranger des planètes, et en mesurer les mouvemens; ou bien ils la promènent sur la terre, pour lui faire examiner tout ce qu'ils y voient. Enfin, ils l'occupent toujours le plus loin d'eux qu'il leur est possible. Cependant, comme ils veulent être philosophes à bon marché, ils ont l'adresse d'étendre ce nom, et ils le donnent le plus souvent à ceux qui font la recherche des causes naturelles.
Aristotle
And what name is more fitting to give them?
Et quel nom plus convenable leur peut-on donner?
Anacreon
The philosopher's only affair is with men, and not at all with the rest of the universe. An astronomer thinks about stars, a physicist thinks about nature, and a philosopher thinks about himself. But who would want to be in such a hard condition? Alas! Nearly no one. One therefore doesn't require philosophers to be philosophers and is content if they are astronomers or physicists. For myself, I have never been in the mood to make speculations, but I'm sure that there is less philosophy in a lot of books with the title, than in some of these little chansons that you scorn so much; in this one for example.
If gold would prolong life,
I would have no other concern,
Than to amass gold.
Death would visit me,
I would send him away quickly,
By giving him my treasure;
But if strict fate
Won't allow it thus,
Gold is no longer necessary for me;
Love and good friends
Will be my concern.
La philosophie n'a affaire qu'aux hommes , et nullement au reste de l'univers. L'astronome pense aux astres, le physicien pense à la nature, et le philosophe pense à soi. Mais qui eût voulu l'être à une condition si dure? hélas! presque personne. On a donc dispensé les philosophes d'être philosophes, et on s'est contenté qu'ils fussent astronomes ou physiciens. Pour moi, je n'ai point été d'humeur à m'engager dans les spéculations;mais je suis sûr qu'il y a moins de philosophie dans beaucoup de livres qui font profession d'en parler, que dans quelques-unes de ces chansonnettes que vous méprisez tant: dans celle-ci, par exemple.
Si l'or prolongeait la vie,
Je n'aurais point d'autre envie
Que d'amasser bien de l'or;
La mort me rendant visite ,
Je la renverrais bien vite ,
En lui donnant mon tresor.
Mais si la sorte sévère
Ne le permet pas ainsi,
L'or ne m'est plus necessaire;
L'amour et la bonne chère
Partageront mon souci.
Aristotle
If you only call philosophy what deals with mores, there are things in my morals works that are just as good as your chanson; because, at least, the obscurity that people reproach me with, and which may in fact be in some of my books, isn't in the ones I wrote on this subject; and everyone admits that nothing is more beautiful or clear than what I say about the passions.
Si vôus ne voulez appeller philosophie que celle qui regarde les mœurs, il ya dans mes ouvrages de morale des choses qui valent bien votre chanson: car enfin, cette obscurité qu'on m'a reprochée, et qui se trouve peut-être dans quelques-uns de mes livres, ne se trouvent nullement dans ce que j'ai écrit sur cette matière; et tout le monde a avoué qu'il n'y avoit rien de plus beau ni de plus clair que ce que j'ai dit des passions.
Anacreon
What an abuse! It is not a question of methodically defining passions, which is what people say that you've done, but of overcoming them. Men willingly hand over their faults to be considered by philosophy, but not to be corrected; and some people have found the secret of morality without having lived closer to it than astronomy does. Can a person keep from laughing, seeing people who, for money, teach contempt for riches, and cowards who fight over the definition of magnanimity?
Quel abus! Il n'est pas question de définir les passions avec méthode, comme on dit que vous avez fait, mais de les vaincre. Les hommes donnent volontiers à la philosophie leurs maux à considérer, mais non pas à guérir; et ils ont trouvé le secret de faire une morale qui ne les touche pas de plus près que l'astronomie. Peut-on s'empêcher de rire, en voyant des gens qui, pour de l'argent, prêchent le mépris des richesses, et des poltrons qui se battent sur la définition du magnanime?
Dialogue V
On the mysteries in the works of Homer
Homer, Aesop
Dialogue V
Sur les mystères des ouvrages d'Homère
Homère, Esope.
Homer
In truth, all the fables that you just recited for me cannot be admired enough. You needed very much art to disguise the most important morals in little stories, and to dress your thoughts in such just and familiar images.
En vérité, toutes les fables que vous venez de me réciter ne peuvent être assez admirées. Il faut que vous ayiez beaucoup d'art, pour déguiser ainsi en petits contes les instructions les plus importantes que la morale puisse donner, et pour couvrir vos pensées sous des images aussi justes et aussi fàmilières que celles-là.
Aesop
It is very sweet for me to be praised by you, who understood the art of disguising one's thoughts so well.
Il m'est bien doux d'être loué sur cet art, par vous qui l'avez si bien entendu.
Homer
Me? I never prided myself on that.
Moi? je ne m'en suis jamais piqué.
Aesop
What! Didn't you try to hide great mysteries in your works?
Quoi! n'avez-vous pas prétendu cacher de grands mystères dans vos ouvrages ?
Homer
Alas! Not at all.
Hélas! point du tout.
Aesop
And yet, all of the scholars of my age said that you did; there is not anything that occurs in the Iliad or Odyssey that isn't one of the most beautiful allegories in the world. They maintained that all of the secrets of theology, physics, morality, and even mathematics were hidden in your books. It was really difficult for them to figure the allegories out; where one found a moral message, another found a message about physics; but in the end, they agreed that you knew and said everything, and it was just a matter of understanding you well.
Cependant, tous les savans de mon temps le disoient; il n'y avoit rien dans l'Iliade, ni dans l'Odissée, à quoi ils ne donnassent les allégories les plus belles du monde. Ils soutenoient que tous les secrets de la théologie, de la physique, de la morale, et des mathématiques même, étoient renfermés dans ce que vous aviez écrit. Véritablement il y avoit quelque difficulté à les développer; où l'un trouvoit un sens moral, l'autre en trouvoit un physique: mais après cela, ils convenoient que vous aviez tout su, et tout dit à qui le comprenoit bien.
Homer
Without lying, I suspected that some people would find subtleties that I never intended. Just as people love prophesying distant affairs before they happen, they love to spout about stories and look for allegories.
Sans mentir, je m'étois bien douté que de certaines gens ne manqueroient point d'entendre finesse où je n'en avois point entendu. Comme il n'est rien tel que de prophétiser des choses éloignées, en attendant l'événement, il n'est rien tel aussi que de débiter des fables, en attendant l'allégorie.
Aesop
It was very bold of you to leave it to your readers to find allegories in your poems. Where would you be now if people only took them word for word?
Il falloit que vous fussiez bien hardi, pour vous reposer sur vos Iecteurs du soin de mettre des allégories dans vos poèmes. Où en eussiez-vous été si on les eût pris au pied de la lettre ?
Homer
Heh, that wouldn't be so terrible.
Hé bien, ce n'eût pas été un grand malheur.
Aesop
What! Look at these gods, look at them; you've got gods who cripple each other; a thunderbolt-hurling Jupiter who in an assembly of the gods threatens the queenly Juno with a beating; a Mars who, when hurt by Diomedes, cries, so you say, like nine or ten thousand men, and doesn’t act like a single one (because, instead of destroying all the Greeks, he complains about being hurt to Jupiter); all this would be good with no allegory?
Quoi! ces dieux qui s'estropient les uns les autres; ce foudroyant Jupiter qui, dans une assemblée de divinités, menace l'auguste Junon de la battre; ce Mars, qui étant blessé par Diomède, crie, dites-vous, comme neuf ou dix mille hommes, et n'agit pas comme un seul (car au lieu de mettre tous les Grecs en pièces, il s'amuse à s'aller plaindre de sa blessure à Jupiter); tout, cela eût été bon sans allégorie?
Homer
Why not? You think that the human spirit only looks for the truth; disillusion yourself. The human spirit and falseness get along extremely well together. If you are going to tell the truth, it would be very wise of you to express it in fables, people will like it more. If you just want to tell stories, people can like them very much without them containing any truth at all. Thus, true things need to dress themselves up as false in order to be well received by the human spirit; but false things enter just as they are, because the human spirit is their birthplace and usual home, and the truth is a stranger. I'll go on: when I killed myself trying to make a story allegorical, most people could have just taken the story as it was, with no allegory at all; and indeed, you can see that my gods, such as they are, all allegories apart, have never been found ridiculous at all.
Pourquoi non? Vous vous imaginez que l'esprit humain ne cherche que le vrai; détrompez- vous. L'esprit humain et le faux sympathisent extrêmement. Si vous avez la vérité à dire, vous ferez fort bien de l'envelopper dans des fables; elle en plaira beaucpup plus. Si vous voulez dire des fables, elles pourront bien plaire, sans contenir aucune vérité. Ainsi, le vrai a besoin d'emprunter la figure du faux , pour être agréablement reçu dans l'esprit humain: mais le faux y entre bien sous sa propre figure; car c'est le lieu de sa naissance et de sa demeure ordinaire, et le vrai y est étranger. Je vous dirai bien plus: quand je me fusse tué à imaginer des fables allégoriques, il eût bien pu arriver que la plupart des gens auroient pris la fable comme une chose qui n'eût point trop été hors d'apparence, et auroient laissé là l'allégorie; et en effet, vous devez savoir que mes dieux, tels qu'ils sont, et tous mystères à part , n'ont point été trouvés ridicules.
Aesop
That makes me tremble; I am horribly afraid that people will think that animals used to really speak, like they do in my stories.
Cela me fait trembler; je crains furieusement que l'on ne croie que les bêtes aient parlé, comme elles font dans mes apologues.
Homer
Now there’s an amusing thing to be afraid of.
Voilà une plaisante peur.
Aesop
What, if people really believed that the gods were able to talk in the way that you said they did, why wouldn’t they believe that animals spoke in the way I said they did?
Hé quoi, si l'on a bien cru que les dieux aient pu tenir les discours que vous leur avez fait tenir, pourquoi ne croira-t-on pas que les bêtes aient parlé de la manière dont je les ai fait parler.
Homer
Ah! It’s not the same thing. Men really want the gods to be as foolish as they are, but they don’t want animals to be as wise.
Ah! ce n'est pas la même chose. Les hommes veulent bien que les dieux soient aussi fous qu'eux; mais ils ne veulent pas que les bêtes soient aussi sages.
Dialogue VI
On the bizarreness of fortune
Athenais, Icasie
Dialogue VI
Sur la bizarrerie des fortunes
Athénàis , Icasie
Icasie
Since you want to know what happened to me, here it is. The Emperor I was living under wanted to get married; and to better choose an Empress, he let it be known that anyone who thought she was beautiful and pleasant enough to claim the throne should come to Constantinople. God knows how many people came. I went, and I had no doubt that being in my first youth, with very lively eyes, and a very pleasant and subtle air, I would win the Empire. The day that they held the assembly of so many pretty women, we all looked at each other's faces with anxiety; and I noticed with pleasure that my rivals looked at me with malicious envy. The Emperor appeared. At first, he passed by many rows of beautiful women without saying anything; but when he came to me, my eyes served me well, and he stopped. 'In truth', he told me, looking at me in the way that I had hoped, 'women are very dangerous; they could accomplish a lot of evil.' I thought that all I had to do was show him that I had esprit, and that I would be Empress; and in the throng of hope and joy that I was in, I made an effort to respond. 'In recompense, Seigneur, women can do, and have sometimes done very much good.' This response spoiled everything. The Emperor found it too spiritual, and he didn't dare marry me.
Puisque vous voulez savoir mon aventure , la voici. L'empereur sous qui je vivois, voulut se marier; et pour mieux choisir une impératrice, il fit publier que toutes celles qui se croyoient d'une beauté et d'un agrément à prétendre au trône, se trouvassent à Constantinople, Dieu sait l'affluence qu'il y eut. J'y allai, et je ne doutai point qu'avec beaucoup de jeunesse , avec des yeux très-vifs, et un air assez agréable et assez fin, je ne pusse disputer l'empire. Le jour que se tint l'assemblée de tant de jolies prétendantes, nous parcourions toutes d'une manière inquiette les visages les unes des autres; et je remarquai avec plaisir que mes rivales me regardoient d'assez mauvais œil. L'empereur parut. Il passa d'abord plusieurs rangs de belles sans rien dire; mais quand il vint à moi, mes yeux me servirent bien, et ils l'arrêtèrent. En vérité, me dit-il, en me regardant de l'air que je pouvoir souhaiter, les femmes sont bien dangereuses, elles peuvent faire beaucoup de mal. Je crus qu'il n'étoit question que d'avoir un peu d'esprit, et que j'étois impératrice; et dans le trouble d'espérance et de joie où je me trouvois,. je fis un effort pour répondre. En récompense, Seigneur, les femmes peuvent faire et ont fait quelquefois beaucoup de bien. Cette réponse gâta tout. L'empereur la trouva si spirituelle, qu'il n'osa m'épouser.
Athenais
That Emperor must have had a very strange character, to fear esprit so much that he thought your response had too much; because frankly, it wasn't very good, and you don't have much to reproach yourself for.
Il falloir que cet empereur-là fût d'un caractère bien étrange, pour craindre tant l'esprit, et qu'il ne s'y connût guère, pour croire que votre réponse en marquât beaucoup; car franchement, elle n'est pas trop bonne, et vous n'avez pas grand chose à vous reprocher.
Icasie
Thus goes fortune. Esprit alone made you Empress; and as for me, the simple appearance of it kept me from being one. You even knew philosophy, which is much worse than having esprit; and for all that, you were still able to marry the young Theodosius.
Ainsi vont les fortunes. L'esprit seul vous a faite impératrice; et moi la seule apparence de l'esprit m'a empêchée de l'être. Vous saviez même encore la philosophie , ce qui est bien pis que d'avoir de l'esprit; et avec tout cela , vous ne laissâtes pas d'épouser Théodose le jeune.
Athenais
If I had had your example before my eyes, I would have been very afraid. After my father made a very knowledgeable and spiritual girl of me, he disinherited me, so much did he believe that my knowledge and wit would not fail to make me a fortune, and to tell you the truth, I believed the same. But now I see that I was running a great chance, and that it was very possible that I could have been left fortuneless and with nothing but philosophy.
Si j'eusse eu devant les yeux un exemple comme le vôtre, j'eusse eu grand'peur. Mon père, après avoir fait de moi une fille fort savante et fort spirituelle, me déshérita, tant il se tenoit sûr qu'avec ma science et mon bel esprit, je ne pouvois manquer de faire fortune, et à dire le vrai, je le croyois comme lui. Mais je vois présentement que je courois un grand hasard, et qu'il n'étoit pas impossible que je demeurasse sans aucun bien, et avec la seule philosophie en partage.
Icasie
Very possibly; but luckily for you, my example had not yet been made. It would be pretty amusing if someone found herself in a similar situation as me after having read my story, and wanting to profit from it, had the subtlety not to give any impression of esprit, and if the only result was that people made fun of her.
Non, assurément; mais par bonheur pour vous, mon aventure n'étoit pas encore arrivée. Il serait assez plaisant que dans une occasion pareille à celle où je me trouvai, quelqu'autre qui saurait mon histoire, et qui voudrait en profiter, eût la finesse de ne laisser point voir d'esprit, et qu'on se moquât d'elle.
Athenais
I don't want to say whether I think that that plan would have worked for her or not; but very often, people do foolish things by chance that turn out to be the most fortunate things in the world. Haven't you heard of that painter who had painted grapes so well that the birds were tricked and began to peck at them? Judge how much of a reputation he made by that. But the grapes were being held by a little peasant in the painting; and people said to the painter that in all honesty, he had painted the grapes very well since they had attracted the birds; but that he had painted the peasant very badly since the birds weren't afraid of him. They were right. However, if the painted had not forgotten himself when painting that little peasant, the grapes would not have had the prodigious success that they did.
Je ne voudrais pas répondre que cela lui réussît, si elle avoit un dessein; mais bien souvent, on fait par hasard les plus heureuses sottises du monde. N'avez-vous pas ouï parler d'un peintre qui avoit si bien peint des grappes de raisin, que des oiseaux s'y trompèrent , et les vinrent becqueter? Jugez quelle réputation cela lui donna. Mais les raisins étoient portés dans le tableau par un petit paysan: on disoit au peintre, qu'à la vérité il falloit qu'ils fussent bien faits, puisqu'ils attiroient les oiseaux; mais qu'il falloit aussi que le petit paysan fût bien mal fait, puisque les oiseaux n'en avoient point de peur. On avoit raison. Cependant, si le peintre ne se fût pas oublié dans le petit paysan , les raisins n'eussent pas eu ce succès prodigieux qu'ils eurent.
Icasie
In truth, whatever people do in the world, they do not realize what they are doing; and after the example of that painter, people must even tremble in the affairs that they conduct themselves well in, and fear not having done something wrong that would have been necessary. Everything is uncertain. It seems that fortune takes care to give varying success to the same action, so that she can always make fun of human reason, which has no certain guide.
En vérité, quoiqu'on fasse dans le monde, on ne sait ce que l'on fait; et après l'aventure de ce peintre, on doit trembler, même dans les affaires où l'on se conduit bien, et craindre de n'avoir pas fait quelque faute qui eût été nécessaire. Tout est incertain. Il semble que la fortune ait soin de donner des succès différens aux mêmes choses, afin de se moquer toujours de la raison humaine, qui ne peut avoir de règle assurée.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
DIALOGUES
DES
MORTS ANCIENS AVEC DES MODERNES
Dialogue I
On praises
Augustus, Pietro Aretino
Dialogue I
Sur les louanges
Auguste, Pierre Aretin
P. Aretino
Yes, I was a wit in my century, and I made a considerable fortune off of princes.
Oui, je fus bel esprit dans mon siècle, et je fis auprès des princes une fortune assez considérable.
Augustus
Then you composed a lot of works praising them?
Vous composâtes donc bien des ouvrages pour eux?
P. Aretino
Not at all. I had a pension from all the princes of Europe, and that would never have happened if I amused myself with praising them. They were at war with each other; some were attacking, others were being attacked; and there was no way to sing praises to them all.
Point du tout. J'avois pension de tous les princes de l'Europe, et cela n'eût pas pu être, si je me fusse amusé à louer. Ils étoient en guerre les uns avec les autres: quand les uns battoient, les autres étoient battus ; il n'y avoit pas moyen de leur chanter à tous leurs louanges.
Augustus
Then what did you do?
Que faisiez-vous donc ?
P. Aretino
I made verses satirizing them. They couldn't all be put into a panegyric; but they all fit well into a satire. I made them so afraid of me that they paid me in order to be able to do foolish things without being made fun of. The emperor Charles V, who you've surely heard of down here, went to fight on the coasts of Africa so inappropriately that he immediately sent me a pretty golden chain. I received it and looked at it sadly; 'Ah! That's very little", I said, "for as great a folly as he committed."
Je faisois des vers contre eux. Ils ne pouvoient pas entrer tous dans un panégyrique, mais il entroient bien tous dans une satyre. J'avois si bien répandu la terreur de mon nom, qu'ils me payoient tribut pour pouvoir faire des sottises en sûreté. L'empereur Charles V, dont assurément vous avez entendu parler ici-bas, s'étant allé faire battre fort mal-à-propos vers les côtes d'Afrique, m'envoya aussitôt une assez belle chaîne d'or. Je la reçus, et la regardant tristement : Ah ! c'est-là bien peu de chose, m'écriai-je, pour une aussi grande folie que celle qu'il a faite,
Augustus
You've found a new way to get money from princes.
Vous aviez trouvé-là une nouvelle manière de tirer de l'argent des princes.
P. Aretino
Didn't I have reason to hope for a enormous fortune, by founding my revenue on other people's folly! That's a good foundation; and it always pays well.
N'avois-je pas sujet de concevoir l'espérance d'une merveilleuse fortune, en m'établissant un revenu sur les sottises d'autrui! c'est un bon fonds, et qui rapporte toujours bien.
Augustus
Whatever you may say, it is safer, and consequently better, to give praises.
Quoique vous en puissiez dire, le métier de louer est plus sûr, et par conséquent meilleur.
P. Aretino
What would you have? I wasn't impudent enough to give praises.
Que voulez-vous ? je n'étois pas assez impudent pour louer.
Augustus
And you were impudent enough to make satires on kings?
Et vous l'étiez bien assez pour faire des satyres sur les têtes couronnées.
P. Aretino
It isn't the same thing. To make satires, it isn't always necessary to scorn the people you're making them against; but to give certain tasteless and outrageous praises, it seems to me that you have to have some contempt for the people you're giving them to, and think that they are real dupes. What impudence inspired Virgil to tell you that people weren't sure if you were a man or a god, or whether you would continue to be in charge of the earth or become a sea god by marrying a daughter of Thetis, who would have willingly sold all her waters for the honor of being your mother-in-law, or finally whether you would in the end be lodged in the heavens next to Scorpio, who took up the place of two signs, and who out of consideration for you would move to the right?
Ce n'est pas la même chose. Pour faire des satyres, il n'est pas toujours besoin de mépriser ceux contre qui on les fait; mais pour donner de certaines louanges fades et outrées, il me semble qu'il faut mépriser ceux mêmes à qui on les donne, et les croire bien dupes. De quel front Virgile osoit-il vous dire qu'on ignorait quel parti vous prendriez parmi les dieux, et que c'étoit une chose incertaine, si vous vous chargeriez du soin des affaires de la terre; ou si vous vous feriez dieu marin, en épousant une fille de Thétis, qui auroit volontiers acheté de toutes ses eaux l'honneur de votre alliance; ou enfin, si vous voudriez vous loger dans le ciel auprès du scorpion, qui tenoit la place de deux signes, et qui, en votre considération, se serait mis plus à l'étroit?
Augustus
Don't be surprised that Virgil had that impudence. When a person is praised, he doesn't examine what he is told very rigorously; he helps the flatterer figure out what he means; and any modesty in the praise itself is at once made up for by the vanity of the person being addressed. Often a person believes that he merits praises that aren't given to him; how could he then believe that he doesn't merit the praises that are given to him?
Ne soyez pas étonné que Virgile eût ce front-là. Quand on est loué, on ne prend pas les louanges avec tant de rigueur: on aide à la lettre, et la pudeur de ceux qui les donnent est bien soulagée par l'amour-propre de ceux à qui elles s'adressent. Souvent on croit mériter des louanges qu'on ne reçoit pas; et comment croirait-on ne mériter pas celles qu'on reçoit?
P. Aretino
Then you believed what Virgil said, that you would either marry a sea nymph or have an apartment in the zodiac?
Vous espériez donc sur la parole de Virgile, que vous épouseriez une nymphe de la mer, ou que vous auriez un appartement dans le zodiaque ?
Augustus
No, no. A person lowers those sorts of praises a little, to reduce them to something a bit more reasonable; but actually, he hardly lowers them at all, and he finds that he was very well evaluated. In the end, however outrageously a person may be praised, he always enjoys believing that he is above ordinary praise and that his merit has driven people beyond all limits. Vanity has many resources.
Non , non. De ces sortes de louanges-là, on en rabat quelque chose, pour les réduire à une mesure un peu plus raisonnable; mais à la vérité on n'en rabat guère, et on se fait à soi-même une bonne composition. Enfin, de quelque manière outrée qu'on soit loué, on en tirera toujours le profit de croire qu'on est au-dessus de toutes les louanges ordinaires, et que par son mérite, on a réduit ceux qui louoient à passer toutes les bornes. La vanité a bien des ressources.
P. Aretino
I see clearly how there isn't any difficulty in praising people excessively; but at least, how can you be so bold as to give them to princes who fight with each other? I bet, for example, that when you pitilessly revenged yourself on your enemies, there was nothingmore glorious in your court than to say how fearful it would be to be opposed to you, but as soon as you did something gentle, people changed their tone and said that there was nothing in vengeance but a barbarous and inhuman glory. People would praise one part of your life at the expense of the other. If it were me, I would be afraid that you would actually listen to me and say, "Choose either severity or mercy to depict the true character of a hero; but after that, stick to what you said."
Je vois bien qu'il ne faut faire aucune difficulté de pousser les louanges dans tous les excès; mais du moins pour celles qui sont contraires les unes aux autres, comment a-t-on la hardiesse de les donner aux princes? Je gage, par exemple, que quand vous vous vengiez impitoyablement de vos ennemis, il n'y avoit rien de plus glorieux, selon toute votre cour, que de foudroyer tout ce qui avoit la témérité de s'opposer à vous; mais qu'aussitôt que vous aviez fait quelqu'action de douceur, les choses changeoient de face, et qu'on ne trouvoit plus dans la vengeance qu'une gloire barbare et inhumaine. On louoit une partie de votre vie aux dépens de l'autre. Pour moi, j'aurois craint que vous ne vous fussiez donné le divertissement de me prendre par mes propres paroles, et que vous ne m'eussiez dit: Choisissez de la sévérité ou de la clémence, pour en faire le vrai caractère d'un héros, mais après cela, tenez-vous-en à votre choix.
Augustus
Why do you want people to look into it so closely? It's advantageous to rulers that everything can be a subject of flattery. Whatever they do, they can't fail to be praised; and if they are praised for opposite things, it's because they have more than one type of merit.
Pourquoi voulez-vous qu'on y regarde de si près? Il est avantageux aux grands que toutes les matières soient problématiques pour la flatterie. Quoi qu'ils fassent, ils ne peuvent manquer d'être loués; et s'ils le sont sur des choses opposées, c'est qu'ils ont plus d'une sorte de mérite.
P. Aretino
But what, would you have no scruples over the praises that people covered you with? Does it require a lot of subtlety to see that they are only attached to your rank? Praises do not distinguish princes at all; they aren't given to heroes any more than to others; but posterity distinguishes the praises that were given to different princes. It confirms some and declares that others were vile flattery.
Mais quoi, ne vous venoit-il jamais aucun scrupule sur tous les éloges dont on vous accabloit ? Etoit-il besoin de raffiner beaucoup , pour s'appercevoir qu'ils étoient attachés à votre rang? Les louanges ne distinguent point les princes : on n'en donne pas plus aux héros qu'aux autres; mais la postérité distingue les louanges qu'on a données à différens princes. Elle confirme les unes, et déclare les autres de viles flatteries.
Augustus
Then you will at least agree that I merited the praises I received, since posterity has definitely agreed with them. I even have something to complain about over it, because posterity is usually so accustomed to regard me as the model for princes, that it praises others by comparing them with me, and often the comparison does me wrong.
Vous conviendrez donc du moins que je méritois les louanges que j'ai reçues, puisqu'il est sûr que la postérité les a ratifiées par son jugement. J'ai même en cela quelque sujet de me plaindre d'elle; car elle s'est tellement accoutumée à me regarder comme le modèle des princes, qu'on les loue d'ordinaire en me les comparant, et souvent la comparaison me fait tort.
P. Aretino
Console yourself: people won't do that anymore. In the same way that all the dead people down here talk about Louis XIV who rules today in France, people will use him as the model for princes, and I predict that in the future, people will not be able to give any more powerful praise than by comparing someone in some way with this great king.
Consolez-vous, on ne vous donnera plus ce sujet de plainte. De la manière dont tous les morts qui viennent ici parlent de Louis XIV, qui règne aujourd'hui en France, c'est lui qu'on regardera désormais comme le modèle des princes, et je prévois qu'à l'avenir, on croira ne les pouvoir louer davantage, qu'en leur attribuant quelque rapport avec ce grand roi.
Augustus
Well so? Don't you think that the people who are told such big exaggerations will listen to them with pleasure?
Hé bien, ne croyez-vous pas que ceux à qui s'adressera une exagération si forte, l'écouteront avec plaisir?
P. Aretino
That may be. People are so avid for praises, that they dispense with justice, truth, and everything that should season them.
Cela pourra être. On est si avide de louanges, qu'on les a dispensées et de la justesse, et de la vérité, et de tous les assaisonnemens qu'elles devroient avoir.
Augustus
It very much seems that you would like to do away with praises. Who would want to give good praises to other people?
Il paroît bien que vous voudriez exterminer les louanges. S'il falloit n'en donner que de bonnes, qui se mêlerait d'en donner?
P. Aretino
Everyone who would do so without self-interest. It only belongs to them to praise. How come your Virgil praised Cato so fittingly, by saying that he presided over the assembly of many good people, who were separated from others in the Elysian Fields? It's because Cato was dead; Virgil, who didn't hope for anything from him or his family, only devoted a single verse to him and limited his praise to a reasonable thought. How come he praised you so tastelessly and verbosely at the beginning of his Georgics? He was receiving a pension from you.
Tous ceux qui en donneraient sans intérêt. Il n'appartient qu'à eux de louer. D'où vient que votre Virgile a si bien loué Caton, en disant qu'il préside à l'assemblée des plus gens de bien , qui, dans les champs Elisées , sont séparés d'avec les autres? C'est que Caton étoit mort; et Virgile, qui n'espéroit rien ni de lui, ni de sa famille, ne lui a donné qu'un seul vers, et a borné son éloge à une pensée raisonnable. D'où vient qu'il vous a si mal loué en tant de paroles au commencement de ses georgiques? Il avoit pension de vous.
Augustus
Then I lost a lot of money spent on my praises?
J'ai donc perdu bien de l'argent en louanges ?
P. Aretino
It upsets me. Why didn't you do the same as one of your successors, who immediately after he became master of the empire set up an explicit edict that forbade anyone from writing verses in praise of him?
J'en suis fâché. Que ne faisiez-vous ce qu'a fait un de vos successeurs, qui, aussitôt qu'il fut parvenu à l'empire, défendit, par un édit exprès, que l'on composât jamais de vers pour lui?
Augustus
Alas! He had more sense than I did. True praises are not those that people freely offer to us, but those that we receive despite their desire not to give them.
Hélas! il avoit plus de raison que moi. Les vraies louanges ne sont pas celles qui s'offrent à nous, mais celles que nous arrachons.
Dialogue II
If it is for the best that men attack and women defend
Sappho, Laura
Dialogue II
S'il a été bien établi que les hommes attaquent et que les femmes se défendent
Sapho Laure
Laura
It is true that the Muses were part of both of our passions, and added a lot of pleasure to them; but there is this difference, that you sang about your lovers; and I was sung about by mine.
Il est vrai que dans les passions que nous avons eues toutes deux, les muses ont été de la partie, et y ont mis beaucoup d'agrément: mais il y a cette différence, que c'étoit vous qui chantiez vos amans et moi j'étois chantée par le mien.
Sappho
Heh, well that means that I loved as much as you were loved.
Hé bien, cela veut dire que j'aimois autant que vous étiez aimée.
Laura
That's not what I'm surprised about, because I know that women are more inclined to tenderness than men. What surprises me is that you revealed everything you felt to the people you loved and that in a way you set siege to their hearts with your poems. It is only proper for a woman to defend herself.
Je n'en suis pas surprise, car je sais que les femmes ont d'ordinaire plus de penchant à la tendresse que les hommes. Ce qui me surprend, c'est que vous ayiez marqué à ceux que vous aimiez , tout ce que vous sentiez pour eux, et que vous ayiez en quelque manière attaqué leur cœur par vos poésies. Le personnage d'une femme n'est que de se défendre.
Sappho
Between ourselves, I'm a little angry about that; that's an injustice that men do us. They've taken the role of attacking, which is much easier than defending oneself.
Entre nous, j'en étois un peu fâchée; c'est une injustice que les hommes nous ont faite. Ils ont pris le parti d'attaquer, qui est bien plus aisé que celui de se défendre.
Laura
Let's not complain at all, our role has it's advantages. We who defend can give ourselves anytime it pleases us; but those who attack do not always succeed when they really want to.
Ne nous plaignons point; notre parti a ses avantages. Nous qui nous défendons, nous nous rendons quand il nous plaît; mais eux qui nous attaquent, ils ne sont pas toujours vainqueur, quand ils le voudraient bien.
Sappho
You forget to mention that when men attack us, they are doing what they want to do, but when we defend ourselves, it's sometimes not what we want to do.
Vous ne dites pas que si les hommes nous attaquent, ils suivent le penchant qu'ils ont à nous attaquer; mais quand nous nous défendons, nous n'avons pas trop de penchant à nous défendre.
Laura
Do you count for nothing the pleasure of seeing so many sweet attacks continued for so long, and often redoubled, showing how much they value the conquest of your heart?
Ne comptez-vous pour rien le plaisir de voir, par tant de douces attaques, si long-temps continuées, et redoublées si souvent, combien ils estiment la conquête de votre cœur ?
Sappho
And do you count for nothing the pain of resisting these sweet attacks? They see the success they are making with pleasure; and we would be very angry if our resistance had absolutely no success.
Et ne comptez-vous pour rien la peine de résister à ces douces attaques? Ils en voient le succès avec plaisir dans tous les progrès qu'ils font auprès de nous; et nous, nous serions bien fâchées que notre résistance eût trop de succès.
Laura
But in the end, although after all their cares they are victorious with good reason, you show them grace by recognizing that they are. You can no longer resist, and they leave it for you to yield what you can no longer defend.
Mais enfin , quoiqu'après tous leurs soins, ils soient victorieux à bon titre, vous leur faites grace, en reconnoissant qu'ils le sont. Vous ne pouvez plus vous défendre, et ils ne laissent pas de vous tenir compte de ce que vous ne vous défendez plus,
Sappho
Ah! That doesn't prevent their victory from being our defeat. In the pleasure of being loved, they only enjoy triumphing over the person they love; and the happy lover is only happy because he is a conqueror.
Ah! cela n'empêche pas que ce qui est une victoire pour eux, ne soit toujours une espèce de défaite pour nous. Ils ne goûtent dans le plaisir d'être aimés, que celui de triompher de la personne qui les aime; et les amans heureux ne sont heureux, que parce qu'ils sont conquérans.
Laura
What? Would you rather that women attack men?
Quoi ! auriez-vous voulu qu'on eût établi que les femmes attaqueroient les hommes ?
Sappho
Eh! What need is there for one person to attack and the other defend? Let them love each other from both sides as much as their hearts tell them to.
Eh! quel besoin y a-t-il que les uns attaquent, et que les autres se défendent ? Qu'on s'aime de part et d'autre autant que le cœur en dira.
Laura
Oh! Things would go by too fast, and love is such an agreeable occupation that one does well to make it last as long as possible. What would happen if a person was yielded to as soon as he offered himself? What would become of all the cares that people take to please each other; all the anxieties that they feel when they are reproached with not being pleasant enough; all the impatience with which they wait for a happy moment, finally all the pleasant mixture of pleasure and pain that people call love? Nothing would be more insipid than people just loving each other.
Oh! les choses iraient trop vite, et l'amour est un commerce si agréable, qu'on a bien fait de lui donner le plus de durée que l'on a pu. Que serait-ce, si l'on étoit reçu dès que l'on s'offrirait ? Que deviendraient tous ces soins qu'on prend pour plaire, toutes ces inquiétudes que l'on sent, quand on se reproche de n'avoir pas assez plu, tous ces empressemens avec lesquels on cherche un moment heureux, enfin tout cet agréable mélange de plaisirs et de peine qu'on appelle amour? Rien ne serait plus insipide, si l'on ne faisoit que s'entr'aimer.
Sappho
Well so, if love has to be a sort of combat, I would rather men be the ones on the defensive. Didn't you already tell me that women are more inclined to tenderness? Therefore, they would attack better.
Hé bien, s'il faut que l'amour soit une espèce de combat, j'aimerais mieux qu'on eût obligé les hommes à se tenir sur la défensive. Aussi-bien, ne m'avez-vous pas dit que les femmes avoient plus de penchant qu'eux à la tendresse? A ce compte, elles attaqueraient mieux.
Laura
Yes, but men would defend themselves too well. When one wants one sex to resist, one only wants them to resist as much as would make the victory of the attacker pleasant, but not enough to actually succeed. They mustn’t be so weak as to give themselves up right off, nor so strong as never to do so. Our character suits that, and it may be that mans does not. Believe me, after a person has reasoned well either about love, or about anything else, he finds at the end of his accounting that things are well as they are, and that the reform that he wanted to make would ruin everything.
Oui, mais ils se défendraient trop bien. Quand on veut qu'un sexe résiste, on veut qu'il résiste autant qu'il faut pour faire mieux goûter la victoire à celui qui attaque, mais non pas assez pour la remporter. Il doit n'être ni si foible, qu'il se rende d'abord, ni si fort, qu'il ne se rende jamais. C'est-là notre caractère, et ce ne serait peut-être pas celui des hommes. Croyez-moi, après qu'on a bien raisonné ou sur l'amour , ou sur telle autre matière qu'on voudra, on trouve au bout du compte que les choses sont bien comme elles sont, et que la réforme qu'on prétendrait y apporter gâterait tout.
Dialogue III
On whether the ancients were more valuable than us
Socrates, Montaigne
Dialogue III
Si les anciens ont eu plus de valeur que nous
Socrate, Montaigne
Montaigne
Then it's really you, the divine Socrates? What a joy it is to see you! I immediately came to the underworld here, and began looking for you from the first. At last, after filling my book with your name and praises, I can talk with you and learn how you had such naive and charming virtue, which was so natural and without example, even in the happy century you lived in.
C'est donc vous, divin Socrate? Que j'ai de joie de vous voir! Je suis tout fraîchement venu en ce pays-ci, et dès mon arrivée, je me suis mis à vous y chercher. Enfin, après avoir rempli mon livre de votre nom et de vos éloges, je puis m'entretenir avec vous, et apprendre comment vous possédiez cette vertu si naïve, dont les allures étoient si naturelles, et qui n'avoient point d'exemple, même dans les heureux siècles où vous vivier.
Socrates
I'm very happy to see someone arrive here who seems to me to have been a philosopher, but since you just came from the world above, and since it's been a long time since I've seen anyone, (because people leave me alone and there's not a big demand for my company), don't take it ill that I ask for some news. How goes the world? Has it changed a lot?
Je suis bien aise de voir un mort qui me paraît avoir été philosophe: mais comme vous êtes nouvellement venu de là-haut, et qu'il y a long-temps que je n'ai vu ici personne (car on me laisse assez seul, et il n'y a pas beaucoup de presse à rechercher ma conversation) , trouvez bon que je vous demande des nouvelles. Comment va le monde? N'est-il pas bien changé?
Montaigne
Extremely. You wouldn't recognize it.
Extrêmement. Vous ne le reconnoîtriez pas.
Socrates
I'm so glad. I always doubted myself when I thought that it would become better and wiser than it was in my time.
J'en suis ravi. Je m'étois toujours bien douté qu'il falloit qu'il devînt meilleur et plus sage qu'il n'étoit de mon temps.
Montaigne
What do you mean? It is more foolish and corrupt than it has ever been. That's the type of change I meant, and I would love to learn from you the history of the times you saw, when so much honesty and right action reigned.
Que voulez-vous dire? il est plus fou et plus corrompu qu'il n'a jamais été. C'est le changement dont je voulois parler, et je m'attendois bien à savoir de vous l'histoire du temps que vous avez vu, et où régnoit tant de probité et de droiture.
Socrates
And I, on the contrary, would love to learn the marvels of the century you lived in. What? The men that live now haven't corrected any of the foolishnesses of antiquity?
Et moi, je m'attendois au contraire à apprendre des merveilles du siècle où vous venez de vivre. Quoi! les hommes d'à-présent ne se sont point corrigés des sottises de l'antiquité?
Montaigne
I think it's because you are an ancient that you speak so familiarly of antiquity; but know that it's a common theme to miss their mores, and day to day, everything about them.
Je crois que c'est parce que vous êtes ancien, que vous parlez de l'antiquité si familièrement; mais sachez qu'on a grand sujet d'en regretter les mœurs, et que de jour en jour tout empire.
Socrates
Can it be? It seems to me that in my time things were in a bad way. I thought that in the end at least they would take a reasonable course, and that men would profit from the experience of so many years.
Cela se peut-il? Il me semble que de mon temps les choses alloient déja bien de travers. Je croyois qu'à la fin, elles prendraient un train plus raisonnable, et que les hommes profiteraient de l'expérience de tant d'années.
Montaigne
Eh! Do men accumulate experience? They are like birds that always get caught in the same net where a hundred thousand birds of the same species were already taken. No one enters life completely new, and the mistakes of fathers are lost to their sons.
Eh ! les hommes font-ils des expériences? Ils sont faits comme les oiseaux, qui se laissent toujours prendre dans les mêmes filets où l'on a déja pris cent mille oiseaux de leur espèce. Il n'y a personne qui n'entre tout neuf dans la vie, et les sottises des pères sont perdues pour les enfans.
Socrates
But how not accumulate experience? I would think the world's old age would be wiser and better ruled than it's youth.
Mais quoi, ne fait-on point d'expérience? Je croirais que le monde devrait avoir une vieillesse plus sage et plus réglée que n'a été sa jeunesse.
Montaigne
The men of every century have the same bents, which reason has no power over. Thence, wherever there are men, there is folly, and the same folly.
Les hommes de tous les siècles ont les mêmes penchans, sur lesquels la raison n'a aucun pouvoir. Ainsi, partout où il y a des hommes, il y a des sottises, et les mêmes sottises.
Socrates
And with that being the case, how would you have the centuries of antiquity be worth more than those today?
Et sur ce pied-là, comment voudriez-vous que les siècles de l'antiquité eussent mieux valu que le siècle d'aujourd'hui ?
Montaigne
Ah! Socrates. I know well that you have a particular way of reasoning, and of so adroitly enveloping the people you speak with in an argument that they can't see the conclusion of, that you lead them where you please, and so are called the wise woman of their thoughts, who gives birth to them. I admit that I just came up with a proposition diametrically opposed to my first; even so, I stand to it. It is certain that one no longer finds souls so vigorous and complete as were in antiquity, the Aristides, Phocions, Pericles', and finally Socrates'.
Ah! Socrate, je savois bien que vous aviez une manière particulière de raisonner, et d'envelopper si adroitement ceux à qui vous aviez affaire, dans des argumens dont ils ne prévoyoient pas la conclusion, que vous les ameniez où il vous plaisoit; et c'est ce que vous appelliez être la sage-femme de leurs pensées, et les faire accoucher. J'avoue que me voilà accouché d'une proposition toute contraire à celle que j'avançois: cependant, je ne saurais encore me rendre. Il est sûr qu'il ne se trouve plus de ces ames vigoureuses et roides de l'antiquité, des Aristide, des Phocion , des Périclès, ni enfin des Socrate.
Socrates
How could it be? Has nature been exhausted, and no longer has the strength to make great souls; and why would it be too exhausted only for making men reasonable? All of it's works haven't degenerated; why would only men do so?
A quoi tient-il ? Est-ce que la nature s'est épuisée, et qu'elle n'a plus la force de produire ces grandes ames? Et pourquoi se seroit-elle encore épuisée en rien, hormis en hommes raisonnables? Aucun de ses ouvrages n'a encore dégénéré; pourquoi n'yauroit-il que les hommes qui dégénérassent?
Montaigne
It's a point of fact, they're degenerate. It seems that nature gave a sample of great men at other times, to persuade us that she knows how to make them if she wants to, and then made the rest without much attention.
C'est un point de fait; ils dégénèrent. Il semble que la nature nous ait autrefois montré quelques échantillons de grands hommes, pour nous persuader qu'elle en auroit su faire, si elle avoit voulu , et qu'ensuite elle ait fait tout le reste avec assez de négligence.
Socrates
Be careful about something. Antiquity is the object of a particular tendency; distance makes it seem greater. If you knew Aristides, Phocion, Pericles, and me, since you number me with them, you would have found people in your century who resemble us. What usually makes someone so biased toward antiquity is the chagrin they have with their own century, and antiquity profits by it. One puts the ancients much higher to abase one's contemporaries. When we are alive, we esteem our ancestors more than they merited it; and at present, our posterity will esteem us more than we merit it, but both our ancestors, and us, and our posterity are all quite equal, and I think that the spectacle of the world would be very boring for someone who saw it from a certain perspective; because it's always the same thing.
Prenez garde à une chose. L'antiquité est un objet d'une espèce particulière; l'éloignement le grossit. Si vous eussiez connu Aristide, Phocion, Périclès et moi, puisque vous voulez me mettre de ce nombre, vous eussiez trouvé dans votre siècle des gens qui nous ressembloient. Ce qui fait d'ordinaire qu'on est si prévenu pour l'antiquité, c'est qu'on a du chagrin contre son siècle, et l'antiquité en profite. On met les anciens bien haut , pour abaisser ses contemporains. Quand nous vivions, nous estimions nos ancêtres plus qu'ils ne méritoient; et à présent, notre postérité nous estime plus que nous ne méritons: mais et nos ancêtres, et nous, et notre postérité, tout cela est bien égal; et je crois que le spectacle du monde seroit bien ennuyeux pour qui le regarderoit d'un certain œil, car c'est toujours la même chose.
Montaigne
I would have thought that everything is in movement, that everything changes, and that different centuries have different characters just like men do. For, doesn't one find knowledgeable centuries, and others that are ignorant? Aren't some naive and others more refined? Aren't some serious, and others playful, some polite and others vulgar?
J'aurois cru que tout étoit en mouvement, que tout changeoit, et que les siècles différens avoient leurs différens caractères, comme les hommes. En effet, ne voit-on pas des siècles savans, et d'autres qui sont ignorans ? n'en voit-on pas de naïfs, et d'autres qui sont plus raffinés ? n'en voit-on pas de sérieux et de badins, de polis et de grossiers ?
Socrates
It is true.
Il est vrai.
Montaigne
And why then wouldn't there be some more centuries that are more virtuous and others that are more wicked?
Et pourquoi donc n'y aurait-il pas des siècles plus vertueux, et d'autres plus méchans ?
Socrates
It doesn't follow. Clothes change; but that doesn't mean that the body changes too. Politeness or vulgarity, knowledge or ignorance, more or less of a certain naivety, a serious or playful genius, are all only the outside of man, and all of them change; but the heart does not change at all, and all of man is in his heart. Someone is ignorant in this century, but trends change and knowing people come along; someone has self-interest, but the trend for having no self interest will never come. Out of the prodigious number of unreasonable people who are born in a hundred years, nature makes maybe two or three dozen reasonable ones that are spread over the earth, and judge yourself whether that is enough to make a trend of virtue and right action.
Ce n'est pas une conséquence. Les habits changent; mais ce n'est pas à dire que la figure des corps change aussi. La politesse ou la grossiereté, la science ou l'ignorance, le plus ou le moins d'une certaine naïveté, le génie sérieux ou badin, ce ne sont-là que les dehors de l'homme, et tout cela change: mais le cœur ne change point, et tout l'homme est dans le cœur. On est ignorant dans un siècle, mais la mode d'être savant peut venir; on est intéressé, mais la mode d'être désintéressé ne viendra point. Sur ce nombre prodigieux d'hommes assez déraisonnables qui naissent en cent ans, la nature en a peut-être deux ou trois douzaines de raisonnables, qu'il faut qu'elle répande par toute la terre; et vous jugez bien qu'ils ne se trouvent jamais nulle part en assez grande quantité, pour y faire une mode de vertu et de droiture.
Montaigne
This allotment of reasonable men, need it be spread out equally? It's very possible that some centuries have more than others.
Cette distribution d'hommes raisonnables se fait-elle également? Il pourrait y avoir des siècles mieux partagés les uns que les autres.
Socrates
The difference would be imperceptible at most. The general order of nature is very constant.
Tout au plus il y aurait quelqu'inégalité imperceptible. L'ordre général de la nature a l'air bien constant.
Dialogue IV
Which deaths are the bravest
Emperor Hadrian, Margaret of Austria
Dialogue IV
Quelles morts sont les plus généreuses
L'empereur Adrien , Marguerite D'autriche.
M. of Austria
What's wrong? You are all flustered.
Qu'avez-vous ? je vous vois tout échauffé.
Hadrian
I was just in an enormous argument with Cato the Younger about how each of us died. I claimed that I died more philosophically than he did.
Je viens d'avoir une grosse contestation avec Caton d'Utique, sur la manière dont nous sommes morts l'un et l'autre. Je prétendois avoir paru dans cette dernière action plus philosophe que lui.
M. of Austria
I find you very bold to challenge as famous a dead man as he is. Wasn't it extremely glorious to have complete power in Utica, to protect all of his friends, and to kill himself in the name of the freedom of his country rather than fall into the hands of a conqueror, even though he would definitely have been pardoned?
Je vous trouve bien hardi d'oser attaquer une mort aussi fameuse que la sienne. Ne fût-ce pas quelque chose de fort glorieux, que de pourvoir à tout dans Utique, de mettre tous ses amis en sûreté, et de se tuer lui-même, pour expirer avec la liberté de sa patrie, et pour ne pas tomber entre les mains d'un vainqueur, qui cependant lui auroit infailliblement pardonné?
Hadrian
Oh! If you were to examine his death closely, you would find many things to correct. First of all, he took so much time over it, and he made such a display of it, that everyone in Utica knew he was going to kill himself. Second, before stabbing himself, he had to read the dialogue of Plato a few times concerning the immortality of the soul. Third, the decision he made put him in such an bad mood that when he went to his room and didn't find his sword hanging from his bedstead (because someone guessed what he was planning to do and took it away), he called for one of his slaves and hit him so hard with his fist that he broke his teeth and bloodied his own hand.
Oh! si vous examiniez de près cette mort-là , vous y trouveriez bien des choses à redire. Premièrement , il y avoit si long-temps qu'il s'y préparoit, et il s'y étoit préparé avec des efforts si visibles, que personne dans Utique ne doutoit que Caton ne se dût tuer. Secondement, avant que de se donner le coup, il eut besoin de lire plusieurs fois le dialogue où Platon traite de l'immortalité de l'ame. Troisièmement, le dessein qu'il avoit pris le rendoit de si mauvaise humeur, que s'étant couché , et ne trouvant point son épée sous le chevet de son lit (car comme on devinoit bien ce qu'il avoit envie de faire, on l'avoit ôtée de-là) il appella pour la demander un de ses esclaves, et lui déchargea sur le visage un grand coup de poing , dont il lui cassa les dents: ce qui est si vrai, qu'il retira sa main toute ensanglantée.
M. of Austria
I admit that there we have a punch that really spoils what would have otherwise been a philosophical death.
J'avoue que voilà un coup de poing qui gâte bien cette mort philosophique.
Hadrian
You couldn't imagine how much noise he made over his stolen sword, and how he reproached his son and servants for wanting to deliver him up to Caesar with his hands and feet tied. In the end, he scolded everyone so bitterly that they were forced to leave his room and let him kill himself.
Vous ne sauriez croire quel bruit il fit sur cette épée ôtée, et combien il reprocha à son fils et à ses domestiques, qu'ils le vouloient livrer à César, pieds et poings liés. Enfin, il les gronda tous de telle sorte, qu'il fallut qu'ils sortissent de la chambre, et le laissassent se tuer.
M. of Austria
It's very true, things could have happened a little more calmly. He could have softly waited until the next day to meet death; nothing is easier than to die when one wants to; but apparently the measures he took to make up for his lack of firmness were taken with so much reason that it was impossible for him to wait, and perhaps he wouldn't have killed himself if he had waited a day.
Véritablement les choses pouvoient se passer d'une manière un peu plus tranquille. Il n'avoit qu'à attendre doucement le lendemain pour se donner la mort: il n'y a rien de plus aisé que de mourir quand on le veut; mais apparemment les mesures qu'il avoit prises en comptant sur sa fermeté, étoient prises si juste, qu'il ne pouvoit plus attendre, et il ne se fût peut-être pas tué, s'il eût différé d'un jour.
Hadrian
You are speaking the truth, and I see that you are a connoisseur of brave deaths.
Vous dites vrai, et je vois que vous vous connoissez en morts généreuses.
M. of Austria
However, people say that when Cato was brought his sword, he retired to his room, went to sleep and snored. That would be very beautiful.
Cependant, on dit qu'après qu'on eut apporté cette épée à Caton, et que l'on se fut retiré, il s'endormit et ronfla. Cela seroit assez beau.
Hadrian
And you believe it? He had just fought with everyone in his house and beat his slaves; people do not sleep so easily after such a thing. Moreover, the hand that he struck the slave gave him too much pain to allow him to sleep, because he couldn't bear it and had a doctor bandage it, even though he was just about to kill himself. Finally, after he was brought his sword and it was midnight, he read the dialogue of Plato two more times. Now, it can definitely be shown that after a large dinner he gave that evening to all of his friends, the walk he took afterward, and everything that happened after he went into his room, that when he finally received his sword it must have been very late; moreover, the dialogue that he read twice was very long, and consequently if he did sleep, it wasn't for very long. Truthfully, I am afraid of the possibility that he faked snoring for his own honor before the people listening at the door.
Et le croyez-vous? Il venoit de quereller tout le monde, et de battre ses valets: on ne dort pas si aisément après un tel exercice. De plus, la main dont il avoit frappé l'esclave, lui faisoit trop de mal pour lui permettre de s'endormir; car il ne put supporter la douleur qu'il y sentoit, et il se la fit bander par un médecin, quoiqu'il fût sur le point de se tuer. Enfin, depuis qu'on lui eut apporté son épée jusqu'à minuit, il lut deux fois le dialogue de Platon. Or, je prouverais bien, par un grand soupé qu'il donna le soir à tous ses amis, par une promenade qu'il fit ensuite, et par tout ce qui se passa jusqu'à ce qu'on l'eût laissé seul dans sa chambre, que quand on lui apporta cette épée, il devoit être fort tard: d'ailleurs, le dialogue qu'il lut deux fois est très-long; et par conséquent, s'il dormit, il ne dormit guère. En vérité, je crains bien qu'il n'ait fait semblant de ronfler, pour en avoir l'honneur auprès de ceux qui écoutoient à la porte de sa chambre.
M. of Austria
You don't critique his death badly, which always had something very heroic about it. But what makes you think that yours was better? As far as I can remember, you died plainly in your bed, in a way that had nothing remarkable about it.
Vous ne faites pas mal la critique de sa mort, qui ne laisse pas d'avoir toujours dans le fond quelque chose de fort héroïque. Mais par où pouvez-vous prétendre que la vôtre l'emporte? Autant qu'il m'en souvient, vous êtes mort dans votre lit tout uniment, et d'une manière qui n'a rien de remarquable.
Hadrian
What! Is there nothing remarkable about these verses I wrote when I was nearly on my last breath?
My little soul, my cutie,
You are going away, my girl, and God knows where;
You are leaving alone and trembling. Alas!
What happened to your frolicsomeness?
What will become of so many pretty excursions I took with you?
Cato treated death too seriously; but you can see that I chatted about it; and that is why I claim that I was more philosophical than he was. It is easier to proudly brave death than to nonchalantly laugh at it, and it is also easier to bear it when it does us honor than when it doesn't do anything for us at all.
Quoi! n'est-ce rien de remarquable que ces vers que je fis presque en expirant ?
Ma petite ame, ma mignonne,
Tu t'en vas donc, ma fille, et Dieu sache où tu vas?
Tu pars seulette et tremblotante. Hélas!
Que deviendra ton humeur folichonne?
Que deviendront tant de jolis ébats ?
Caton traita la mort comme une affairé trop sérieuse: mais pour moi, vous voyez que je badinai avec elle; et c'est en quoi je prétends que ma philosophie alla plus loin que celle de Caton. Il n'est pas si difficile de braver fièrement la mort, que d'en railler nonchalamment, ni de la bien recevoir quand on l'appelle à son secours, que quand elle vient sans qu'on ait besoin d'elle.
M. of Austria
Yes, I agree that Cato's death is less beautiful than yours; but unfortunately, I've never heard of these verses that you made, which give all the beauty to your death.
Oui, je conviens que la mort de Caton est moins belle que la vôtre; mais, par malheur , je n'avois point remarqué que vous eussiez fait ces petits vers, en quoi consiste toute la beauté.
Hadrian
Such is the world. Cato tears his entrails out rather than fall into his enemies hands; this is perhaps not such a great action, but it shines throughout all history and everyone is struck by it. Someone else dies quietly and is able to write playful verses about death, which is more than Cato did; but this doesn't strike anyone, and there is nearly no record of it.
Voilà comme tout le monde est fait. Que Caton se déchire les entrailles, plutôt que de tomber entre les mains de son ennemi, ce n'est peut-être pas au fond si grand' chose; cependant un trait comme celui-là brille extrêmement dans l'histoire , et il n'y a personne qui n'en soit frappé. Qu'un autre meure tout doucement, et se trouve en état de faire des tours badins sur sa mort, c'est plus que ce qu'a fait Caton; mais cela n'a rien qui frappe, et l'histoire n'en tient presque pas compte.
M. of Austria
Alas! Nothing is truer than what you are saying; and as for myself, the very person speaking with you, I died even more beautifully than you did, and people talked about it even less. I didn't die completely, but what happened was superior to your death, which was in turn superior to Cato's.
Hélas! rien n'est plus vrai que ce que vous dites; et moi, qui vous parle, j'ai une mort que je prétends plus belle que la vôtre, et qui a fait encore moins de bruit. Ce n'est pourtant pas une mort toute entière; mais telle qu'elle est, elle est au-dessus de la votre , qui est au-dessus de celle de Caton.
Hadrian
How! What do you mean?
Comment ! que voulez-vous dire?
M. of Austria
I was the daughter of an Emperor. I was engaged to the son of a King, and after his father died, this Prince sent me back home despite the solemn promise his father had given that he would marry me. Then I became engaged to yet another Prince, and as I was traveling over the sea to meet this husband, my ship became stuck in a furious storm, which put my life in impending peril. Still, I composed the following epitaph for myself:
Here died Margot, a gentle lady
Who had two husbands and was still a maid
In truth, I ended up not dying; but that was not my doing. Consider this death well, and you will be satisfied. The firmness of Cato is exaggerated in one way, yours in another, and mine was natural. He was too affected, you were too light-hearted; I was reasonable.
J'étois fille d'un empereur: je fus fiancée à un fils de roi, et ce prince, après la mort de son père, me renvoya chez le mien, malgré la promesse solemnelle qu'il avoit faite de m'épouser. Ensuire on me fiança encore au fils d'un autre roi; et comme j'allois par mer trouver cet époux, mon vaisseau fut battu d'une furieuse tempête qui mit ma vie en un danger très-évident. Ce fut alors que je me composai moi-même cette épitaphe:
Ci gist Margot, la gentil' damoiselle ,
Qu'a deus maris, et encore est pucelle.
A la vérité, je n'en mourus pas, mais il ne tint pas à moi. Concevez bien cette espèce de mort-là, vous en serez satisfait. La fermeté de Caton est outrée dans un genre, la vôtre dans un autre, la mienne est naturelle. Il est trop guindé, vous êtes trop badin, je suis raisonnable.
Hadrian
What! You reproach me with having too little fear of death?
Quoi! vous me reprochez d'avoir trop peu craint la mort?
M. of Austria
Yes; it seems that one cannot avoid being upset in any way while dying; and I am sure that it took you as much violence against yourself to banter as it took Cato to tear open his torso. I expected a shipwreck at any moment without being frightened, and with sang-froid I composed my own epitaph; that is very extraordinary, and if nothing softened my story, people would be right not to believe it, or to think that I was only boasting. However, I was a poor girl who had been engaged twice, and I was sad to die without having been married; I wrote down the regret that I felt, and this shows that I acted sincerely. Your verses did not mean anything, they were only a galimatias of playful words; the meaning of mine was very clear, and one is immediately satisfied by them, which shows that they are much more natural than yours.
Oui, il n'y a pas d'apparence que l'on n'ait aucun chagrin en mourant; et je suis sûre que vous vous fîtes alors autant de violence pour badiner , que Caton pour se déchirer les entrailles. J'attends un naufrage à tous momens, sans m'épouvanter, et je compose de sang-froid mon épitaphe: cela est fort extraordinaire; et s'il n'y avoit rien qui adoucît cette histoire, on auroit raison de ne la croire pas, ou de croire que je n'eusse agi que par fanfaronnade. Mais en même temps, je suis une pauvre fille deux fois fiancée, et qui ai pourtant le maiheur de mourir fille; je marque le regret que j'en ai, et cela met dans mon histoire toute la vraisemblance dont elle a besoin. Vos vers, prenez-y garde, ne veulent rien dire; ce n'est qu'un galimathias composé de petits termes folâtres: mais les miens ont un sens fort clair, et dont on se contente d'abord, ce qui fait voir que la nature y parle bien plus que dans les vôtres.
Hadrian
In truth, I would never have thought that being upset at dying as a virgin would have given you more glory than me.
En vérité, je n'eusse jamais cru que le chagrin de mourir avec votre virginité eût dû vous être si glorieux.
M. of Austria
Joke as much as you want; but my death, if it can be called that, has an essential advantage over Cato's and yours. You both claimed to be philosophers during your lives, and your honor required you both not to fear death: if you had been allowed to fear it, I don't know what would have happened. But for myself, as long as the storm lasted I would have been permitted to tremble and cry to heaven without anyone esteeming me any less, and I nonetheless stayed calm enough to write my epitaph.
Plaisantez-en tant que vous voudrez; mais ma mort, si elle peut s'appeller ainsi, a encore un avantage essentiel sur celle de Caton et sur la vôtre. Vous aviez tant fait les philosophes l'un et l'autre pendant votre vie, que vous vous étiez engagés d'honneur à ne craindre point la mort; et s'il vous eût été permis de la craindre, je ne sais ce qui en fût arrivé. Mais moi, tant que la tempête dura, j'étois en droit de trembler, et de pousser des cris jusqu'au ciel, sans que personne y trouvât à redire, ni m'en estimât moins; cependant, je demeurai assez tranquille pour faire mon épitaphe.
Hadrian
Just between us, didn't you write that epitaph once you reached land?
Entre nous, l'épitaphe ne fut-elle point faite sur la terre ?
M. of Austria
Ah! That suspicion is in bad taste; I didn't suggest anything like that about your verses.
Ah ! cette chicane-là est de mauvaise grace: je ne vous en ai pas fait de pareille sur vos vers.
Hadrian
Then I completely believe you, and I admit that virtue is very great when it doesn't pass the limits that are set by nature.
Je me rends donc de bonne foi, et j'avoue que la vertu est bien grande, quand elle ne passe point les bornes de la nature.
Dialogue V
On the merit there is in the discoveries that the moderns have made in physiology and medicine
Erasistratus, William Harvey
Dialogue IV
De quelle merite sont les decouvertes que les modernes ont faites dans la physique et dans la médecine
Erasistrate, Hervé.
Erasistratus
What you're telling me is marvelous. What! Blood circulates in the body? Veins carry it from the extremities to the heart, and it leaves the heart to enter the arteries, which carry it to the extremities?
Vous m'apprenez des choses merveilleuses. Quoi! le sang circule dans le corps? les veines le portent des extrémités au cœur, et il sort du cœur pour entrer dans les artères, qui le reportent vers les extrémités?
Harvey
I've shown it by so many experiments that no one doubts it.
J'en ai fait voir tant d'expériences, que personne n'en doute plus.
Erasistratus
Then we doctors from antiquity were very much mistaken, who thought that the blood only moved very slowly from the heart to the extremities of the body; and people are very obliged to you for having done away with this old error.
Nous nous trompions donc bien, nous autres médecins de l'antiquité, qui croyions que le sang n'avoit qu'un mouvement très-lent du cœur vers les extrémités du corps, et on vous est bien obligé d'avoir aboli cette vieille erreur!
Harvey
I claim as much, and people should even feel more obliged to me, since I was the one who put them on the track toward making those precious discoveries that people make today in anatomy. Since I discovered that blood circulates, people have been finding new conduits, canals, and reservoirs. It seems that people have found new foundations for everything in man. See how many advantages our modern medicine has over yours. You took it upon yourself to heal the human body, and it wasn't even known to you.
Je le prétends ainsi, et même on doit m'avoir d'autant plus d'obligation, que c'est moi qui ai mis les gens en train de faire toutes ces belles découvertes qu'on fait aujourd'hui dans l'anatomie. Depuis que j'ai eu trouvé une fois la circulation du sang, c'est à qui trouvera un nouveau conduit, un nouveau canal, un nouveau réservoir. Il semble qu'on ait refondu tout l'homme. Voyez combien notre médecine moderne doit avoir d'avantage sur la vôtre. Vous vous mêliez de guérir le corps humain, et le corps humain ne vous étoit seulement pas connu.
Erasistratus
I admit that the moderns are better physiologists than us, they know nature better; but they are not better doctors, we healed the sick as well as they do. I would have really liked to give all these moderns, and you first, the Prince Antiochus, to heal him of his quartan fever. You know how I inspected him, and how I discovered, when his pulse quickened more than usual in the presence of Stratonice, that he loved this beautiful queen, and that his entire illness came from the violence it took him to hide his passion. However, I cured someone as sick as he was, without knowing that the blood circulates, and I think that with all the help that this knowledge gives you, you would have been very awkward in my place. It's not at all a question of new conduits, or of new reservoirs; what is most important to know about people who are sick, is their heart.
J'avoue que les modernes sont meilleurs physiciens que nous; ils connoissent mieux la nature: mais ils ne sont pas meilleurs médecins; nous guérissions les malades aussi bien qu'ils les guérissent. J'aurois bien voulu donner à tous ces modernes, et à vous tout le premier, le prince Antiochus à guérir de sa fièvre quarte. Vous savez comme je m'y pris, et comme je découvris par son pouls qui s'émut plus qu'à l'ordinaire en la présence de Stratonice, qu'il étoit amoureux de cette belle reine, et que tout son mal venoit de la violence qu'il se faisoit pour cacher sa passion. Cependant je fis une cure aussi difficile et aussi considérable que celle-là, sans savoir que le sang circulât; et je crois qu'avec tout le secours que cette connoissance eût pu vous donner, vous eussiez été fort embarrassé en ma place. Il ne s'agissoit point de nouveaux conduits, ni de nouveaux réservoirs; ce qu'il y avoit de plus important à connoître dans le malade, c'etoit le cœur.
Harvey
It is not always a question of a person's heart, and every sick person is not in love with his mother-in-law, like Antiochus. I don't doubt at all that because you didn't know that the blood circulates, you let many people who were in your hands die.
Il n'est pas toujours question du cœur, et tous les malades ne sont pas amoureux de leur belle-mère, comme Antiochus. Je ne doute point que faute de savoir que le sang circule, vous n'aviez laissé mourir bien des gens entre vos mains.
Erasistratus
What? You think that your new discoveries are very useful?
Quoi! vous croyez vos nouvelles découvertes fort utiles ?
Harvey
Definitely.
Assurément.
Erasistratus
Respond then, please, to a little question I will ask you. Why do we see as many dead people coming down here everyday as we do?
Répondez donc, s'il vous plaît, à une petite question que je vais vous faire. Pourquoi voyons nous venir ici tous les jours autant de morts qu'il en soit jamais venu ?
Harvey
Oh! If they die, that's their fault; it's not that of doctors.
Oh! s'ils meurent, c'est leur faute; ce n'est plus celle des médecins.
Erasistratus
But the circulation of the blood, the conduits, the canals, the reservoirs, all that can't heal them then?
Mais cette circulation du sang, ces conduits, ces canaux, ces réservoirs, tout cela ne guérit donc de rien?
Harvey
Maybe people haven't yet had the time to find the uses of everything they've only learned recently, but it is impossible that in time we won't see great effects.
On n'a peut-être pas encore eu le loisir de tirer quelque usage de tout ce qu'on a appris depuis peu; mais il est impossible qu'avec le temps on n'en voie de grands effets.
Erasistratus
On my word, nothing will change. Do you see? There is a certain amount of useful knowledge, which men have discovered early, to which they hardly add, and which they hardly pass beyond, if they pass beyond it. They owe this to nature, that she has inspired them very quickly with what they need to know; because they would be lost if they left it to the slowness of their reason to find it. As for other things that are not as necessary, reason can discover it little by little, and in a long series of years.
Sur ma parole, rien ne changera. Voyez-vous, il y a une certaine mesure de connoissances utiles, que les hommes ont eu de bonne heure, à laquelle ils n'ont guère ajouté, et qu'ils ne passeront guère, s'ils la passent. Ils ont cette obligation à la nature, qu'elle leur a inspiré fort promptement ce qu'ils avoient besoin de savoir; car ils étoient perdus, si elle eût laissé à la lenteur de leur raison à le chercher. Pour les autres choses qui ne sont pas si nécessaires , elles se découvrent peu-à-peu, et dans de longues suites d'années.
Harvey
It would be strange if when man was known better, he couldn't be more often cured. If that were so, why amuse oneself in trying to perfect the knowledge of the human body? It would be better just to leave it alone.
Il seroit étrange, qu'en connoissant mieux l'homme, on ne le guérît pas mieux. À ce compte , pourquoi s'amuseroit-on à perfectionner la science du corps humain? Il vaudrait mieux laisser-là tout.
Erasistratus
People would lose some very pleasant knowledge; but as for utility, I think that to discover a new conduit in the human body or a new star in the sky, is much the same thing. Nature wants men to succeed each other after a certain amount of time by means of dying; it is allowed them to defend themselves against it up to a certain point; but after that, a person can make precious new discoveries in anatomy, or penetrate deeper and deeper into the structure of the human body, he will never make a dupe of nature, people will die as usual.
On y perdrait des connoissances fort agréables: mais pour ce qui est de l'utilité, je crois que découvrir un nouveau conduit dans le corps de l'homme, ou une nouvelle étoile dans le ciel, est bien la même chose. La nature veut que dans de certains temps, les hommes se succèdent les uns aux autres par le moyen de la mort; il leur est permis de se défendre contre elle jusqu'à un certain point: mais passé cela, on aura beau faire de nouvelles découvertes dans l'anatomie, on aura beau pénétrer de plus en plus dans les secrets de la structure du corps humain, on ne prendra point la nature pour dupe; on mourra comme à l'ordinaire.
Dialogue VI
On the immortality of one’s name
Berenice, Cosimo II de' Medici
Dialogue VI
Sur l'immortalité du nom
Bérénice, Cosme de Médicis
C. de' Medici
I just learned news that afflicts me very much from some scholars who recently died. You know that Galileo, who was my mathematician, had discovered certain planets that rotated around Jupiter to which he gave the name the Stars of Medici in my honor. But someone has told me that they are hardly known under this name at all anymore, and that people simply call them the Satellites of Jupiter. The world must be very wicked at present, and very envious of other people's glory.
Je viens d'apprendre de quelques savans, qui sont morts depuis peu, une nouvelle qui m'afflige beaucoup. Vous saurez que Galilée, qui étoit mon mathématicien, avoit découvert de certaines planètes qui tournent autour de Jupiter, auxquelles il donna en mon honneur le nom d'astres de Médicis. Mais on m'a dit qu'on ne les connoît presque plus sous ce nom-là , et qu'on les appelle simplement satellites de Jupiter. Il faut que le monde soit présentement bien méchant et bien envieux de la gloire d'autrui.
Berenice
Without a doubt; I have hardly ever seen such remarkable effects of it's malignity.
Sans doute, je n'ai guère vu d'effets plus remarquables de sa malignité.
C. de' Medici
You can speak at your leisure after all of the luck you have had. You made a vow to cut your hair if your husband Ptolemy would be the victor of I-don't-know-which war. He came back having defeated his enemies; you consecrated your hair in a Temple of Venus, and the next day a mathematician made it disappear, and told everyone that it had changed into a constellation that he called the Hair of Berenice. To try to pass off stars as a woman's hair is much worse than giving a prince's name to new planets; however, your hair is remembered, and the poor Stars of Medici are not.
Vous en parlez bien à votre aise, après le bonheur que vous avez eu. Vous aviez fait vœu de couper vos cheveux, si votre mari Ptolomée revenoit vainqueur de je ne sais quelle guerre. Il revint, ayant défait ses ennemis; vous consacrâtes vos cheveux dans un temple de Vénus, et le lendemain , un mathématicien les fit disparoître, et publia qu'ils avoient été changés en une constellation, qu'il appella la chevelure de Bérénice. Faite passer des étoiles pour des cheveux d'une femme, c'étoit bien pis que de donner le nom d'un prince à de nouvelles planètes. Cependant votre chevelure a réussi, et ces pauvres astres de Médicis n'ont pu avoir la même fortune.
Berenice
If I could give you my hair in the sky, I would, to console you; and I would even be so generous as to claim that such a present would not make you very indebted to me.
Si je pouvois vous donner ma chevelure céleste, je vous la donnerois pour vous consoler, et même je serois assez généreuse pour ne prétendre pas que vous me fussiez fort obligé de ce présent-là.
C. de' Medici
However, it would be very considerable; and I wish that my name was as assured of surviving as yours.
Il seroit pourtant considérable, et je voudrais que mon nom fut aussi assuré de vivre que le vôtre.
Berenice
Alas! If every constellation were called by my name, would I be better off? My name would be up in the sky, and I would still be down here. Men are amusing; they cannot escape death, and they try to help two or three syllables that belong to them to escape. There is a cute trick they think they are playing on death. Wouldn't it be better for them to consent to die with good grace, them and their names?
Hélas! quand toutes les constellations porteroient mon nom, en serois-je mieux ? Ils seraient là haut dans le ciel, et moi, je n'en serois pas moins ici bas. Les hommes sont plaisans; ils ne peuvent se dérober à la mort, et ils tâchent à lui dérober deux ou trois syllabes qui leur appartiennent. Voilà une belle chicane qu'ils s'avisent de lui faire. Ne vaudroit-il pas mieux qu'ils consentissent de bonne grace à mourir, eux et leurs noms?
C. de' Medici
I am not of your opinion at all; people try to die as little as possible, and as dead as they may be, they still try to cling to life; with a marble statue of themselves, with stones that they lift on top of each other, or even with a tomb. They would hang and drown themselves for all of this.
Je ne suis point de votre avis: on ne meurt que le moins qu'il est possible, et tout mort qu'on est, on tâche à tenir encore à la vie par un marbre où l'on est représenté, par des pierres que l'on a élevées les unes sur les autres, par son tombeau même. On se noie, et on s'accroche à tout cela.
Berenice
Yes, but the things that are supposed to guarantee that their names survive, die themselves. What would you attach your immortality to? A city, an empire even, cannot assure that it will continue.
Oui, mais les choses qui devroient garantir nos noms de la mort, meurent elles-mêmes à leur manière. A quoi attacherez-vous votre immortalité ? Une ville, un empire même ne vous en peut pas bien répondre.
C. de' Medici
It's not a bad idea to give one's name to the stars, they last forever.
Ce n'est pas une mauvaise invention que de donner son nom à des astres; ils demeurent toujours.
Berenice
From what I hear said about them, stars themselves are subject to caution. People say that there are new ones that come to be, and old ones that go out; and you will see that in the end, my locket of hair will not stay in the sky. At the very least, our names will die grammatically; a few changes in the letters make them useful only for perplexing scholars. A little while ago, I saw two dead men who were arguing heatedly with each other. I approached and asked them who they were; one responded that he was Constantine the Great, and the other that he was a Barbarian Emperor. They were arguing over which one was greater in life. Constantine said that he was the Emperor of Constantinople; and the Barbarian responded that he was the Emperor of Istanbul. To show how great Constantinople was, Constantine said that it was between three seas; the Euxeinos Pontos, the Bosporus of Thrace, and the Propontis. The other replied that Istanbul also commanded three seas; the Black Sea, the Strait, and the Sea of Marmara. This similarity between Constantinople and Istanbul surprised Constantine; but after he was told exactly where Istanbul was, he was still more surprised to find that it was Constantinople, and that he didn't recognize it because it had changed names. 'Alas!', he cried, 'I might as well have had Constantinople keep it's first name, Byzance. Who will recognize the name Constantine in Istanbul? My name has already met it's end.'
Encore de la manière dont j'en entends parler, les astres eux-mêmes sont-ils sujets à caution. On dit qu'il y en a de nouveaux qui viennent, et d'anciens qui s'en vont; et vous verrez qu'à la longue, il ne me restera peut-être pas un cheveu dans le ciel. Du moins ce qui ne peut manquer à nos noms, c'est une mort , pour ainsi dire, grammaticale; quelques changemens de lettres les mettent en état de ne pouvoir plus servir qu'à donner de l'embarras aux savans. Il y a quelque temps que je vis ici bas des morts qui contestoient avec beaucoup de chaleur l'un contre l'autre. Je m'approchai; je demandai qui ils étoient, et on me répondit que l'un étoit le grand Constantin, et l'autre un Empereur barbare. Ils disputoient sur la préférence de leurs grandeurs passées. Constantin disoit qu'il avoit été empereur dé Constantinople; et le barbare, qu'il l'avoit été de Stamboul. Le premier, pour faire valoir sa Constantinople, disoit qu'elle étoit située sur trois mers, sur le Pont-Euxin, sur le Bosphore de Thrace, et sur la Propontide. L'autre repliquoit que Stamboul commandoit aussi à trois mers; à la mer Noire, au Détroit, et à la mer de Marmara. Ce rapport de Constantinople et de Stamboul étonna Constantin: mais après qu'il se fut informé exactement de la situation de Stamboul, il fut encore bien plus surpris de trouver que c'étoit Constantinople, qu'il n'avoit pu reconnoître, à cause du changement des noms. « Hélas! s'écria-t-il, j'eusse aussi bien fait de laisser à Constantinople son premier nom de Byzance. Qui démêlera le nom de Constantin dans Stamboul? Il y tire bien à sa fin ».
C. de' Medici
In good faith, you are consoling me a little, and I am resolved to have patience. After all, since we cannot avoid dying, it is reasonable enough that our names die also; they are not better off than us.
De bonne foi, vous me consolez un peu, et je me résous à prendre patience. Après tout, puisque nous n'avons pu nous dispenser de mourir, il est assez raisonnable que nos noms meurent aussi; ils ne sont pas de meilleure condition que nous.
On the immortality of one’s name
Berenice, Cosimo II de' Medici
Dialogue VI
Sur l'immortalité du nom
Bérénice, Cosme de Médicis
C. de' Medici
I just learned news that afflicts me very much from some scholars who recently died. You know that Galileo, who was my mathematician, had discovered certain planets that rotated around Jupiter to which he gave the name the Stars of Medici in my honor. But someone has told me that they are hardly known under this name at all anymore, and that people simply call them the Satellites of Jupiter. The world must be very wicked at present, and very envious of other people's glory.
Je viens d'apprendre de quelques savans, qui sont morts depuis peu, une nouvelle qui m'afflige beaucoup. Vous saurez que Galilée, qui étoit mon mathématicien, avoit découvert de certaines planètes qui tournent autour de Jupiter, auxquelles il donna en mon honneur le nom d'astres de Médicis. Mais on m'a dit qu'on ne les connoît presque plus sous ce nom-là , et qu'on les appelle simplement satellites de Jupiter. Il faut que le monde soit présentement bien méchant et bien envieux de la gloire d'autrui.
Berenice
Without a doubt; I have hardly ever seen such remarkable effects of it's malignity.
Sans doute, je n'ai guère vu d'effets plus remarquables de sa malignité.
C. de' Medici
You can speak at your leisure after all of the luck you have had. You made a vow to cut your hair if your husband Ptolemy would be the victor of I-don't-know-which war. He came back having defeated his enemies; you consecrated your hair in a Temple of Venus, and the next day a mathematician made it disappear, and told everyone that it had changed into a constellation that he called the Hair of Berenice. To try to pass off stars as a woman's hair is much worse than giving a prince's name to new planets; however, your hair is remembered, and the poor Stars of Medici are not.
Vous en parlez bien à votre aise, après le bonheur que vous avez eu. Vous aviez fait vœu de couper vos cheveux, si votre mari Ptolomée revenoit vainqueur de je ne sais quelle guerre. Il revint, ayant défait ses ennemis; vous consacrâtes vos cheveux dans un temple de Vénus, et le lendemain , un mathématicien les fit disparoître, et publia qu'ils avoient été changés en une constellation, qu'il appella la chevelure de Bérénice. Faite passer des étoiles pour des cheveux d'une femme, c'étoit bien pis que de donner le nom d'un prince à de nouvelles planètes. Cependant votre chevelure a réussi, et ces pauvres astres de Médicis n'ont pu avoir la même fortune.
Berenice
If I could give you my hair in the sky, I would, to console you; and I would even be so generous as to claim that such a present would not make you very indebted to me.
Si je pouvois vous donner ma chevelure céleste, je vous la donnerois pour vous consoler, et même je serois assez généreuse pour ne prétendre pas que vous me fussiez fort obligé de ce présent-là.
C. de' Medici
However, it would be very considerable; and I wish that my name was as assured of surviving as yours.
Il seroit pourtant considérable, et je voudrais que mon nom fut aussi assuré de vivre que le vôtre.
Berenice
Alas! If every constellation were called by my name, would I be better off? My name would be up in the sky, and I would still be down here. Men are amusing; they cannot escape death, and they try to help two or three syllables that belong to them to escape. There is a cute trick they think they are playing on death. Wouldn't it be better for them to consent to die with good grace, them and their names?
Hélas! quand toutes les constellations porteroient mon nom, en serois-je mieux ? Ils seraient là haut dans le ciel, et moi, je n'en serois pas moins ici bas. Les hommes sont plaisans; ils ne peuvent se dérober à la mort, et ils tâchent à lui dérober deux ou trois syllabes qui leur appartiennent. Voilà une belle chicane qu'ils s'avisent de lui faire. Ne vaudroit-il pas mieux qu'ils consentissent de bonne grace à mourir, eux et leurs noms?
C. de' Medici
I am not of your opinion at all; people try to die as little as possible, and as dead as they may be, they still try to cling to life; with a marble statue of themselves, with stones that they lift on top of each other, or even with a tomb. They would hang and drown themselves for all of this.
Je ne suis point de votre avis: on ne meurt que le moins qu'il est possible, et tout mort qu'on est, on tâche à tenir encore à la vie par un marbre où l'on est représenté, par des pierres que l'on a élevées les unes sur les autres, par son tombeau même. On se noie, et on s'accroche à tout cela.
Berenice
Yes, but the things that are supposed to guarantee that their names survive, die themselves. What would you attach your immortality to? A city, an empire even, cannot assure that it will continue.
Oui, mais les choses qui devroient garantir nos noms de la mort, meurent elles-mêmes à leur manière. A quoi attacherez-vous votre immortalité ? Une ville, un empire même ne vous en peut pas bien répondre.
C. de' Medici
It's not a bad idea to give one's name to the stars, they last forever.
Ce n'est pas une mauvaise invention que de donner son nom à des astres; ils demeurent toujours.
Berenice
From what I hear said about them, stars themselves are subject to caution. People say that there are new ones that come to be, and old ones that go out; and you will see that in the end, my locket of hair will not stay in the sky. At the very least, our names will die grammatically; a few changes in the letters make them useful only for perplexing scholars. A little while ago, I saw two dead men who were arguing heatedly with each other. I approached and asked them who they were; one responded that he was Constantine the Great, and the other that he was a Barbarian Emperor. They were arguing over which one was greater in life. Constantine said that he was the Emperor of Constantinople; and the Barbarian responded that he was the Emperor of Istanbul. To show how great Constantinople was, Constantine said that it was between three seas; the Euxeinos Pontos, the Bosporus of Thrace, and the Propontis. The other replied that Istanbul also commanded three seas; the Black Sea, the Strait, and the Sea of Marmara. This similarity between Constantinople and Istanbul surprised Constantine; but after he was told exactly where Istanbul was, he was still more surprised to find that it was Constantinople, and that he didn't recognize it because it had changed names. 'Alas!', he cried, 'I might as well have had Constantinople keep it's first name, Byzance. Who will recognize the name Constantine in Istanbul? My name has already met it's end.'
Encore de la manière dont j'en entends parler, les astres eux-mêmes sont-ils sujets à caution. On dit qu'il y en a de nouveaux qui viennent, et d'anciens qui s'en vont; et vous verrez qu'à la longue, il ne me restera peut-être pas un cheveu dans le ciel. Du moins ce qui ne peut manquer à nos noms, c'est une mort , pour ainsi dire, grammaticale; quelques changemens de lettres les mettent en état de ne pouvoir plus servir qu'à donner de l'embarras aux savans. Il y a quelque temps que je vis ici bas des morts qui contestoient avec beaucoup de chaleur l'un contre l'autre. Je m'approchai; je demandai qui ils étoient, et on me répondit que l'un étoit le grand Constantin, et l'autre un Empereur barbare. Ils disputoient sur la préférence de leurs grandeurs passées. Constantin disoit qu'il avoit été empereur dé Constantinople; et le barbare, qu'il l'avoit été de Stamboul. Le premier, pour faire valoir sa Constantinople, disoit qu'elle étoit située sur trois mers, sur le Pont-Euxin, sur le Bosphore de Thrace, et sur la Propontide. L'autre repliquoit que Stamboul commandoit aussi à trois mers; à la mer Noire, au Détroit, et à la mer de Marmara. Ce rapport de Constantinople et de Stamboul étonna Constantin: mais après qu'il se fut informé exactement de la situation de Stamboul, il fut encore bien plus surpris de trouver que c'étoit Constantinople, qu'il n'avoit pu reconnoître, à cause du changement des noms. « Hélas! s'écria-t-il, j'eusse aussi bien fait de laisser à Constantinople son premier nom de Byzance. Qui démêlera le nom de Constantin dans Stamboul? Il y tire bien à sa fin ».
C. de' Medici
In good faith, you are consoling me a little, and I am resolved to have patience. After all, since we cannot avoid dying, it is reasonable enough that our names die also; they are not better off than us.
De bonne foi, vous me consolez un peu, et je me résous à prendre patience. Après tout, puisque nous n'avons pu nous dispenser de mourir, il est assez raisonnable que nos noms meurent aussi; ils ne sont pas de meilleure condition que nous.
DIALOGUES
OF
DEAD MODERNS
DIALOGUES
DES
MORTS MODERNES
Dialogue I
Comparison of ambition and love
Anne de Bretagne, Mary of England
Dialogue I
Comparaison de l'ambition et de l'amour
Anne de Bretagne, Marie d'Angleterre
A.de Bretagne
It's certain, my death gave you great pleasure. You immediately crossed the sea to marry Louis XII and seize the throne that I left empty. But you didn't enjoy it for very long, and I was avenged by your youth itself, and by your beauty that made you too lovable to the king, and that consoled him too easily for my loss; because it made him die of a heart attack and kept you from being queen for long.
Assurément ma mort vous fit grand plaisir. Vous passâtes aussitôt la mer pour aller épouser Louis XII, et vous saisir du trône que je laissois vuide. Mais vous n'en jouîtes guère, et je fus vengée de vous par votre jeunesse même et par votre beauté, qui vous rendoient trop aimable aux yeux du roi, et le consoloient trop aisément de ma perte, car elles hâtèrent sa mort, et vous empêchèrent d'être longtemps reine.
M. of England
It's true that I hardly saw the royal house before it disappeared into less than nothing.
Il est vrai que la royauté ne fit que se montrer à moi, et disparut en moins de rien.
A. de Bretagne
And after this, you became the Duchess of Suffolk? That's an exemplary downfall. As for myself, thank heavens, I had a different destiny. When Charles VIII died, I didn't lose my rank at all, and married his successor, an example of a singular happiness.
Et après cela vous devîntes duchesse de Suffolk ? C'étoit une belle chute. Pour moi, grace au ciel, j'ai eu une autre destinée. Quand Charles VIII mourut, je ne perdis point mon rang par sa mort, et j'épousai son successeur, ce qui est un exemple de bonheur fort singulier.
M. of England
Would you believe me if I told you that I never envied you that happiness?
M'en croiriez-vous, si je vous disois que je ne vous ai jamais envié ce bonheur-là ?
A. de Bretagne
No. I have too clear an image of what it would have meant to be the Duchess of Suffolk after having been the Queen of France.
Non; je conçois trop bien ce que c'est que d'être duchesse de Suffolk, après qu'on a été reine de France.
M. of England
But I loved the Duke of Suffolk.
Mais j'aimois le duc de SurFolk.
A. de Bretagne
It doesn't matter. When a person has enjoyed the pleasures of being Royalty, can one enjoy others?
Il n'importe. Quand on a goûté les douceurs de la royauté, en peut-on goûter d'autres?
M. of England
Yes, if they're those of love. I assure you that you don't have to hate me at all for having succeeded you; if it were in my power to choose, I would never have been anything but a Duchess, and I would have quickly returned to England to take this title, and be discharged of that of Queen.
Oui, pourvu que ce soient celles de l'amour. Je vous assure que vous ne devez point me vouloir de mal de ce que je vous ai succédé. Si j'eusse toujours pu disposer de moi, je n'eusse été que duchesse; et je retournai bien vîte en Angleterre pour y prendre ce titre, dès que je fus déchargée de celui de reine.
A. de Bretagne
Do you have such lowly feelings?
Aviez-vous les sentimens si peu élevés?
M. of England
I admit that ambition never reached me. Nature gave men pleasures that are simple, easy and tranquil, and their imagination gave them ones that are obstructed, uncertain, and difficult to acquire; but nature is cleverer than they are at giving them pleasure. Why not rely on her for this? She has invented love, which is very pleasant, and they have invented ambition, which there was no need for.
J'avoue que l'ambition ne me touchoit point. La nature a fait aux hommes des plaisirs simples, aisés, tranquilles, et leur imagination leur en a fait qui sont embarrassans, incertains , difficiles à acquérir; mais la nature est bien plus habile à leur faire des plaisirs, qu'ils ne le sont eux-mêmes. Que ne se reposent-ils sur elle de ce soin-là ? Elle a inventé l'amour, qui est fort agréable , et ils ont inventé l'ambition, dont il n'étoit pas besoin.
A. de Bretagne
How can you say that men have invented ambition? Nature inspires the desire for elevation and command no less than the tendency to love.
Qui vous a dit que les hommes aient inventé l'ambition? La nature n'inspire pas moins les desirs de l'élévation et du commandement, que le penchant de l'amour.
M. of England
It is easy to recognize ambition as the work of mans imagination; it has the character. It is restless, full of chimerical projects; it goes beyond it's desires and the things it has accomplished; it can never find it's limit.
L'ambition est aisée à reconnoître pour un ouvrage de l'imagination; elle en a le caractère: elle est inquiette, pleine de projets chimériques; elle va au-delà de ses souhaits, dès qu'ils sont accomplis; elle a un terme qu'elle n'attrape jamais.
A. de Bretagne
And unhappily love is satisfied with it’s all too soon.
Et malheureusement l'amour en a un qu'il attrape trop tôt.
M. of England
With the result that one can find happiness in love many times, but one can't in ambition even once; or if it is possible to, at least such pleasures are made for very few people; and consequently it's not at all a gift from nature to men, because natures favors are always very general. Observe love: it is made for everyone. Only to people who look for their happiness in too high a station does nature seem to begrudge the sweetness of love. A king who is sure of a hundred thousand soldiers can hardly be sure of his lovers heart. He doesn't know if someone loves him for his rank and would act the same for anyone in his place. His Royalty costs him all of the pleasures that are simplest and sweetest.
Ce qui en arrive, c'est qu'on peut être plusieurs fois heureux par l'amour, et qu'on ne le peut être une seule fois par l'ambition; ou, s'il est possible qu'on le soit, du moins ces plaisirs-là sont faits pour trop peu de gens: et par conséquent ce n'est point la nature qui les propose aux hommes, car ses faveurs sont toujours très-générales. Voyez l'amour, il est fait pour tout le monde. Il n'y a que ceux qui cherchent leur bonheur dans une trop grande élévation, à qui il semble que la nature ait envié les douceurs de l'amour. Un roi qui peut s'assurer de cent mille bras, ne peut guère s'assurer d'un cœur: il ne sait si on ne fait pas pour son rang, tout ce qu'on auroit fait pour la personne d'un autre. Sa royauté lui coûte tous les plaisirs les plus simples et les plus doux.
A. de Bretagne
You don't make Kings unhappier with this inconvenience than they are happy to be King. When one sees one's will not only followed, but anticipated, an infinity of fortunes that depend on a word that one can pronounce whenever one wants; so many cares, so many plans, so much eagerness, so much desire to please, of which you are the only object; in truth, one consoles oneself for not knowing immediately if one is loved for one's rank or person. The pleasures of ambition are made, you say, for very few people; but you reproach them for what gives them more charm. In happiness, being an exception is delightful; and those who rule are excepted from the condition of other men with such advantage that when they lose something of the pleasures that belong to everyone, they are recompensed by the rest.
Vous ne rendez pas les rois beaucoup plus malheureux par cette incommodité que vous trouvez à leur condition. Quand on voit ses volontés non seulement suivies, mais prévenues, une infinité de fortunes qui dépendent d'un mot qu'on peut prononcer quand on veut, tant de soins, tant de desseins , tant d'empressemens, tant d'application à plaire, dont on est le seul objet: en vérité on se console de ne pas savoir tout-à-fait au juste si on est aimé pour son rang ou pour sa personne. Les plaisirs de l'ambition sont faits, dites-vous, pour trop peu de gens; ce que vous leur reprochez est leur plus grand charme. En fait de bonheur, c'est l'exception qui flatte, et ceux qui régnent sont exceptés si avantageusement de la condition des autres hommes, que, quand ils perdraient quelque chose des plaisirs qui sont communs à tout le monde, ils seraient récompensés du reste.
M. of England
Ah! Judge of the loss they have by the feeling with which they receive these simple and common pleasures once they are presented to them. Listen to what a Princess of my blood told me here the other day, who ruled in England for a long time and very happily. She was giving a first audience to the Ambassadors of Holland who had a young and very handsome man in their retinue. The moment he saw the Queen, he turned toward those who were near him and said something quietly enough, but with such an air that she nearly guessed what it was, because women have an admirable instinct. The three or four words of this young Hollander, that she hadn't heard, brought him closer to her spirit than the whole harangue of the Ambassadors, and as soon as he left, she wanted to assure herself of what she thought. She asked those who spoke with the young man what he had said. They responded with a lot of respect that it was something they wouldn't dare say to a great Queen, and defended themselves for a long time from repeating it. Finally, when she reminded them of her absolute authority, she learned what the Hollander had cried so softly. 'Ah! She is a beautiful woman', and he added some expression that was rude enough, but warm, to show how much he liked her. They only told this to the Queen while trembling, but nothing happened except, when she dismissed the Ambassadors, she gave the young Hollander a considerable present. See how even with all the pleasures of grandeur and Royalty that surrounded her, the pleasure of being found beautiful struck her deeply.
Ah! jugez de la perte qu'ils font, par la sensibilité avec laquelle ils reçoivent ces plaisirs simples et communs, lorsqu'il s'en présente quelqu'un à eux. Apprenez ce que me conta ici, l'autre jour, une princesse de mon sang, qui a régné en Angleterre, et fort longtemps, et fort heureusement, et sans mari. Elle donnoit une première audience à des ambassadeurs hollandois , qui avoient à leur suite un jeune homme bien fait. Dès qu'il vit la reine, il se tourna vers ceux qui étoient auprès de lui, et leur dit quelque chose assez bas, mais d'un certain air qui fit qu'elle devina à-peu-près ce qu'il disoit; car les femmes ont un instinct admirable. Les trois ou quatre mots que dit ce jeune Hollandois, qu'elle n'avoit pas entendus, lui tintent plus à l'esprit que toute la harangue des ambassadeurs; et aussi-tôt qu'ils furent sortis, elle voulut s'assurer de ce qu'elle avoit pensé. Elle demanda à ceux à qui avoit parlé ce jeune homme, ce qu'il leur avoit dit. Ils lui répondirent, avec beaucoup de respect, que c'étoit une chose qu'on n'osoit redire à une grande reine, et se défendirent longtemps de la répéter. Enfin, quand elle se servit de son autorité absolue, elle apprit que le Hollandois s'étoit écrié tout bas: Ah ! voilà une femme bien faite; et avoit ajouté quelque expression assez grossière, mais vive, pour marquer qu'il la trouvoit à son gré. On ne fit ce récit à la reine qu'en tremblant; cependant il n'en arriva rien autre chose, sinon que, quand elle congédia les ambassadeurs, elle fit au jeune Hollandois un présent fort considérable. Voyez comme au travers de tous les plaisirs de grandeur et de royauté dont elle étoit environnée, ce plaisir d'être trouvée belle alla la frapper vivement.
A. de Bretagne
But in the end, she wouldn't have accepted it at the loss of the others. Everything that is too simple never accommodates men. It doesn't suffice that pleasures touch them with sweetness; they must take action and transport them. How come pastoral life, such as poets depict, has never been outside their works and hasn't succeeded in practice? It is too sweet and too smooth.
Mais enfin elle n'eût' pas voulu l'acheter par la perte des autres. Tout ce qui est trop simple n'accommode point les hommes. Il ne suffit pas que les plaisirs touchent avec douceur; on veut qu'ils agitent et qu'ils transportent. D'où vient que la vie pastorale, telle que les poetes la dépeignent, n'a jamais été que dans leurs ouvrages, et ne réussirait pas dans la pratique? Elle est trop douce et trop unie.
M. of England
I admit that men spoil everything. But how does it happen that the most superb and pompous court in the world delights them less than the images they sometimes put forth of pastoral life? It's because they were made for it.
J'avoue que les hommes ont tout gâté. Mais d'où vient que la vue d'une cour la plus superbe et la plus pompeuse du monde les flatte moins que les idées qu'ils se proposent quelquefois de cette vie pastorale? C'est qu'ils étoient faits pour elle.
A. de Bretagne
Then your simple and tranquil pleasures have no place but in the chimeras of men?
Ainsi le partage de vos plaisirs simples et tranquilles, n'est plus que d'entrer dans les chimères que les hommes se forment?
M. of England
No, no. If it's true that few people have enough good taste to begin with these pleasures, at least they happily end with them if they can. Imagination makes its way through false objects and comes back to true ones.
Non, non. S'il est vrai que peu de gens aient le goût assez bon pour commencer par ces plaisirs-là, du moins on finit volontiers par eux, quand on le peut. L'imagination a fait sa course sur les faux objets, et elle revient aux vrais.
Dialogue II
If there is anything that can give a person glory
Charles V, Erasmus
Dialogue II
S'il y a quelque chose dont on puisse tirer de la gloire
Charles V, Erasme
Erasmus
Don't doubt it; if we dead people each had a rank, I would be above you.
En doutez point; s'il y avoit des rangs chez les morts, je ne vous céderais pas la préséance.
Charles V
What? A grammarian, a scholar; and to be as kind as possible and give you as much merit as you could possibly claim, a man with spirit, would claim to have the upper hand over a prince who was master of the better part of Europe?
Quoi ! un grammairien, un savant, et pour dire encore plus, et pousser votre mérite jusqu'où il peut aller, un homme d'esprit prétendrait l'emporter sur un Prince qui s'est vu maître de la meilleure partie de l'Europe?
Erasmus
Add America, and I still wouldn't fear you. All this grandeur was only yours because of chance, and whoever would look into everything that it was based on would see that very clearly. If your grandfather Ferdinand had been a man of letters, you would have had nearly nothing in Italy; if other princes had had the wit to believe that there were Antipodes, Christopher Columbus would have gone to them, and America would not be among your states at all; if after the death of the last duke of Burgundy, Louis XI had thought about what he was doing, Maximilian would not have inherited Burgundy, nor would you have inherited the Netherlands; if Henry of Castille, the brother of your grandmother Isabella, had never had a bad reputation with women, or if his wife's virtue had been less doubtful, Henry's daughter would have passed for as much, and the kingdom of Castille would have escaped you.
Joignez-y encore l'Amérique, et je ne vous en craindrai pas davantage. Toute cette grandeur n'étoit pour ainsi dire qu'un composé de plusieurs hasards; et qui désassembleroit toutes les parties dont elle étoit formée, vous le ferait voir bien clairement. Si Ferdinand, votre grandpère, eut été homme de parole, vous n'aviez presque rien en Italie; si d'autres princes que lui eussent eu l'esprit de croire qu'il y avoit des Antipodes, Christophe Colomb ne se fût point adressé à lui, et l'Amérique n'étoit point au nombre de vos Etats; si après la mort du dernier duc de Bourgogne, Louis XI eût bien songé à ce qu'il faisoit, l'héritière de Bourgogne n'étoit point pour Maximilien, ni les Pays-Bas pour vous; si Henri de Castille, frère de votre grand-mère Isabelle, n'eût point été en mauvaise réputation auprès des femmes, ou si sa femme n'eût point été d'une vertu assez douteuse, la fille de Henri eût passé pour être sa fille, et le royaume de Castille vous échappoit.
Charles V
You're making me tremble. It seems to me that now I'm either going to lose Castille, the Netherlands, America, or Italy.
Vous me faites trembler. Il me semble qu'a l'heure qu'il est, je perds, ou la Castille, ou les Pays-Bas, ou l'Amérique , ou l'Italie.
Erasmus
Don't make fun. You couldn't have improved any of those things with your good sense or confidence. Only the powerlessness of your great-uncle or the flirtatiousness of your great-aunt could have helped you. You see what a delicate edifice something is, which is only founded on so much chance.
N'en raillez point. Vous ne sauriez donner un peu plus de bon sens à l'un, ou de bonne foi à l'autre , qu'il ne vous en coûte beaucoup. Il n'y a pas jusqu'à l'impuissance de votre grand-oncle, ou jusqu'à la coquetterie de votre grand-tante, qui ne vous soient nécessaires. Voyez combien c'est un édifice délicat, que celui qui est fondé sur tant de choses qui dépendent du hasard.
Charles V
In truth, there's no way to survive an examination as rigorous as yours. I admit that all my grandeur and titles disappear before you.
En vérité, il n'y a pas moyen de soutenir un examen aussi sévère que le vôtre. J'avoue que vous faites disparaître toute ma grandeur et tous mes titres.
Erasmus
But those are the qualities that you pride yourself on; and I've taken them away from you easily. Do you remember the story of the Athenian Cimon who, having taken many Persians as prisoners, was selling their clothes in one place, and in another the naked prisoners themselves; and since all their clothes were full of great magnificence, people were crowding to buy them; but as for the men, seeing them naked, people didn't want them at all? In good faith, I think that what happened to the Persians there would happen to many others, if someone separated their personal merit from what fortune has given them.
Ce sont-là pourtant ces qualités dont vous prétendiez vous parer; je vous en ai dépouillé sans peine. Vous souvient-il d'avoir ouï dire que l'Athénien Cimon, ayant fait beaucoup de Perses prisonniers, exposa en vente d'un côté, leurs habits, et de l'autre leurs corps tout nuds; et que comme les habits étoient d'une grande magnificence, il y eut presse à les acheter; mais que pour les hommes personne n'en voulut? De bonne-foi, je crois que ce qui arriva à ces Perses-là , arriveroit à bien d'autres, si l'on séparoit leur mérite personnel d'avec celui que la fortune leur a donné.
Charles V
But what is personal merit?
Mais quel est ce mérite personnel ?
Erasmus
Is it necessary to ask? Everything that is within us. The spirit, for example, and knowledge.
Faut-il le demander? Tout ce qui est en nous. L'esprit, par exemple; les sciences.
Charles V
And a person is right to give others glory on account of them?
Et l'on peut avec raison en tirer de la gloire ?
Erasmus
Without a doubt. They don't belong to chance, like nobility or riches.
Sans doute. Ce ne sont pas des biens de fortune, comme la noblesse ou les richesses.
Charles V
I'm surprised by what you're saying. Doesn't knowledge come to scholars in the same way that wealth comes to most rich people? Is it not by way of succession? You learned men inherit the work of former men as much as we do. If someone left us everything we own, someone also left you everything you know; and that is the reason that many scholars regard what they received from the ancients with the same respect with which some people regard the lands and mansions of their ancestors, which they would very much hate to change.
Je suis surpris de ce que vous dites. Les sciences ne viennent-elles pas aux savans, comme les richesses viennent à la plupart des gens riches? N'est-ce pas par voie de succession? Vous héritez des anciens, vous autres hommes doctes, ainsi que nous de nos pères. Si on nous a laissé tout ce que nous possédons, on vous a laissé aussi ce que vous savez; et de-là vient que beaucoup de savans regardent ce qu'ils ont reçu des anciens, avec le même respect que quelques gens regardent les terres et les maisons de leuts aïeux, où ils seraient fâchés de rien changer.
Erasmus
But the nobility were born inheriting the wealth and titles of their fathers, and scholars were not born inheriting the knowledge of previous men. Knowledge is not something received by succession at all, it's a completely new acquisition that a person undertakes himself; or if it is a succession, it is difficult enough to receive for doing so to be very honorable.
Mais les grands naissent héritiers de la grandeur de leurs pères, et les savans n'étoient pas nés héritiers des connoissances des anciens. La science n'est point une succession qu'on reçoit, c'est une acquisition toute nouvelle que l'on entreprend de faire; ou si c'est une succession, elle est assez difficile à recueillir, pour être fort honorable.
Charles V
Well so, compare the trouble it takes to acquire spiritual goods with the trouble it takes to conserve the goods of fortune, and they are equal; because in the end, if you only take difficulty into account, it is certain that affairs in the world are more difficult than speculations in a cabinet.
Hé bien, mettez la peine qui se trouve à acquérir les biens de l'esprit, contre celle qui se trouve à conserver les biens de la fortune, voilà les choses égales; car enfin, si vous ne regardez que la difficulté, souvent les affaires du monde en ont bien autant que les spéculations du cabinet.
Erasmus
But let's not talk of knowledge; let's discuss the spirit; this good is not dependent on any chance.
Mais ne parlons point de la science, tenons nous-en à l'esprit; ce bien-là ne dépend aucunement du hasard.
Charles V
It doesn't depend on chance at all? What! doesn't the spirit consist in a certain arrangement of the brain, and is there less chance involved in being born with a well-made brain than in being born with a father who is king? You were a great genius; but ask all the philosophers what kept you from being stupid and a vegetable. Hardly anything; a little placement of fibers, so small that the most delicate anatomy will never perceive it. And after that, these Messieurs with Spirit dare to argue that only they have riches that are independent of chance, and they think that they are in a place to scorn all other men?
Il n'en dépend point ? Quoi ! l'esprit ne consistet-il pas dans une certaine conformation du cerveau, et le hasard est-il moindre, de naître avec un cerveau bien disposé, que de naître d'un père qui soit roi? Vous étiez un grand génie: mais demandez à tous les philosophes à quoi il tenoit que vous ne fussiez stupide et hébété'; presque à rien, à une petite position de fibres; enfin, à quelque chose que l'anatomie la plus délicate ne sauroit jamais appercevoir. Et après cela, ces messieurs les beaux-esprits nous oserorit soutenir qu'il n'y a qu'eux qui aient des biens indépendans du hasard, et ils se croiront en droit de mépriser tous les autres hommes?
Erasmus
According to you, being rich or having a spirit are of equal merit.
A votre compte, être riche ou avoir de l'esprit, c'est le même mérite.
Charles V
To have a spirit is a happier chance, but at bottom it is always a chance.
Avoir de l'esprit est un hasard plus heureux; mais au fond, c'est toujours un hasard.
Erasmus
Then everything is chance?
Tout est donc hasard ?
Charles V
Yes, provided that one gives this name to an order that one doesn't know at all. I leave you to judge if I haven't stripped men much better than you have; you only took some advantages of birth away from them, and I even took away the spirit. If before founding their vanity on something, people wanted to make sure that it really belonged to them, there would hardly be any vanity in the world.
Oui, pourvu qu'on donne ce nom à un ordre que l'on ne connoît point. Je vous laisse à juger si je n'ai pas dépouillé les hommes encore mieux que vous n'aviez fait; vous ne leur ôtiez que quelques avantages de la naissance, et je leur ôte jusqu'à ceux de l'esprit. Si avant que de tirer vanité d'une chose, ils vouloient s'assurer bien qu'elle leur appartînt, il n'y auroit guère de vanité dans le monde.
If there is anything that can give a person glory
Charles V, Erasmus
Dialogue II
S'il y a quelque chose dont on puisse tirer de la gloire
Charles V, Erasme
Erasmus
Don't doubt it; if we dead people each had a rank, I would be above you.
En doutez point; s'il y avoit des rangs chez les morts, je ne vous céderais pas la préséance.
Charles V
What? A grammarian, a scholar; and to be as kind as possible and give you as much merit as you could possibly claim, a man with spirit, would claim to have the upper hand over a prince who was master of the better part of Europe?
Quoi ! un grammairien, un savant, et pour dire encore plus, et pousser votre mérite jusqu'où il peut aller, un homme d'esprit prétendrait l'emporter sur un Prince qui s'est vu maître de la meilleure partie de l'Europe?
Erasmus
Add America, and I still wouldn't fear you. All this grandeur was only yours because of chance, and whoever would look into everything that it was based on would see that very clearly. If your grandfather Ferdinand had been a man of letters, you would have had nearly nothing in Italy; if other princes had had the wit to believe that there were Antipodes, Christopher Columbus would have gone to them, and America would not be among your states at all; if after the death of the last duke of Burgundy, Louis XI had thought about what he was doing, Maximilian would not have inherited Burgundy, nor would you have inherited the Netherlands; if Henry of Castille, the brother of your grandmother Isabella, had never had a bad reputation with women, or if his wife's virtue had been less doubtful, Henry's daughter would have passed for as much, and the kingdom of Castille would have escaped you.
Joignez-y encore l'Amérique, et je ne vous en craindrai pas davantage. Toute cette grandeur n'étoit pour ainsi dire qu'un composé de plusieurs hasards; et qui désassembleroit toutes les parties dont elle étoit formée, vous le ferait voir bien clairement. Si Ferdinand, votre grandpère, eut été homme de parole, vous n'aviez presque rien en Italie; si d'autres princes que lui eussent eu l'esprit de croire qu'il y avoit des Antipodes, Christophe Colomb ne se fût point adressé à lui, et l'Amérique n'étoit point au nombre de vos Etats; si après la mort du dernier duc de Bourgogne, Louis XI eût bien songé à ce qu'il faisoit, l'héritière de Bourgogne n'étoit point pour Maximilien, ni les Pays-Bas pour vous; si Henri de Castille, frère de votre grand-mère Isabelle, n'eût point été en mauvaise réputation auprès des femmes, ou si sa femme n'eût point été d'une vertu assez douteuse, la fille de Henri eût passé pour être sa fille, et le royaume de Castille vous échappoit.
Charles V
You're making me tremble. It seems to me that now I'm either going to lose Castille, the Netherlands, America, or Italy.
Vous me faites trembler. Il me semble qu'a l'heure qu'il est, je perds, ou la Castille, ou les Pays-Bas, ou l'Amérique , ou l'Italie.
Erasmus
Don't make fun. You couldn't have improved any of those things with your good sense or confidence. Only the powerlessness of your great-uncle or the flirtatiousness of your great-aunt could have helped you. You see what a delicate edifice something is, which is only founded on so much chance.
N'en raillez point. Vous ne sauriez donner un peu plus de bon sens à l'un, ou de bonne foi à l'autre , qu'il ne vous en coûte beaucoup. Il n'y a pas jusqu'à l'impuissance de votre grand-oncle, ou jusqu'à la coquetterie de votre grand-tante, qui ne vous soient nécessaires. Voyez combien c'est un édifice délicat, que celui qui est fondé sur tant de choses qui dépendent du hasard.
Charles V
In truth, there's no way to survive an examination as rigorous as yours. I admit that all my grandeur and titles disappear before you.
En vérité, il n'y a pas moyen de soutenir un examen aussi sévère que le vôtre. J'avoue que vous faites disparaître toute ma grandeur et tous mes titres.
Erasmus
But those are the qualities that you pride yourself on; and I've taken them away from you easily. Do you remember the story of the Athenian Cimon who, having taken many Persians as prisoners, was selling their clothes in one place, and in another the naked prisoners themselves; and since all their clothes were full of great magnificence, people were crowding to buy them; but as for the men, seeing them naked, people didn't want them at all? In good faith, I think that what happened to the Persians there would happen to many others, if someone separated their personal merit from what fortune has given them.
Ce sont-là pourtant ces qualités dont vous prétendiez vous parer; je vous en ai dépouillé sans peine. Vous souvient-il d'avoir ouï dire que l'Athénien Cimon, ayant fait beaucoup de Perses prisonniers, exposa en vente d'un côté, leurs habits, et de l'autre leurs corps tout nuds; et que comme les habits étoient d'une grande magnificence, il y eut presse à les acheter; mais que pour les hommes personne n'en voulut? De bonne-foi, je crois que ce qui arriva à ces Perses-là , arriveroit à bien d'autres, si l'on séparoit leur mérite personnel d'avec celui que la fortune leur a donné.
Charles V
But what is personal merit?
Mais quel est ce mérite personnel ?
Erasmus
Is it necessary to ask? Everything that is within us. The spirit, for example, and knowledge.
Faut-il le demander? Tout ce qui est en nous. L'esprit, par exemple; les sciences.
Charles V
And a person is right to give others glory on account of them?
Et l'on peut avec raison en tirer de la gloire ?
Erasmus
Without a doubt. They don't belong to chance, like nobility or riches.
Sans doute. Ce ne sont pas des biens de fortune, comme la noblesse ou les richesses.
Charles V
I'm surprised by what you're saying. Doesn't knowledge come to scholars in the same way that wealth comes to most rich people? Is it not by way of succession? You learned men inherit the work of former men as much as we do. If someone left us everything we own, someone also left you everything you know; and that is the reason that many scholars regard what they received from the ancients with the same respect with which some people regard the lands and mansions of their ancestors, which they would very much hate to change.
Je suis surpris de ce que vous dites. Les sciences ne viennent-elles pas aux savans, comme les richesses viennent à la plupart des gens riches? N'est-ce pas par voie de succession? Vous héritez des anciens, vous autres hommes doctes, ainsi que nous de nos pères. Si on nous a laissé tout ce que nous possédons, on vous a laissé aussi ce que vous savez; et de-là vient que beaucoup de savans regardent ce qu'ils ont reçu des anciens, avec le même respect que quelques gens regardent les terres et les maisons de leuts aïeux, où ils seraient fâchés de rien changer.
Erasmus
But the nobility were born inheriting the wealth and titles of their fathers, and scholars were not born inheriting the knowledge of previous men. Knowledge is not something received by succession at all, it's a completely new acquisition that a person undertakes himself; or if it is a succession, it is difficult enough to receive for doing so to be very honorable.
Mais les grands naissent héritiers de la grandeur de leurs pères, et les savans n'étoient pas nés héritiers des connoissances des anciens. La science n'est point une succession qu'on reçoit, c'est une acquisition toute nouvelle que l'on entreprend de faire; ou si c'est une succession, elle est assez difficile à recueillir, pour être fort honorable.
Charles V
Well so, compare the trouble it takes to acquire spiritual goods with the trouble it takes to conserve the goods of fortune, and they are equal; because in the end, if you only take difficulty into account, it is certain that affairs in the world are more difficult than speculations in a cabinet.
Hé bien, mettez la peine qui se trouve à acquérir les biens de l'esprit, contre celle qui se trouve à conserver les biens de la fortune, voilà les choses égales; car enfin, si vous ne regardez que la difficulté, souvent les affaires du monde en ont bien autant que les spéculations du cabinet.
Erasmus
But let's not talk of knowledge; let's discuss the spirit; this good is not dependent on any chance.
Mais ne parlons point de la science, tenons nous-en à l'esprit; ce bien-là ne dépend aucunement du hasard.
Charles V
It doesn't depend on chance at all? What! doesn't the spirit consist in a certain arrangement of the brain, and is there less chance involved in being born with a well-made brain than in being born with a father who is king? You were a great genius; but ask all the philosophers what kept you from being stupid and a vegetable. Hardly anything; a little placement of fibers, so small that the most delicate anatomy will never perceive it. And after that, these Messieurs with Spirit dare to argue that only they have riches that are independent of chance, and they think that they are in a place to scorn all other men?
Il n'en dépend point ? Quoi ! l'esprit ne consistet-il pas dans une certaine conformation du cerveau, et le hasard est-il moindre, de naître avec un cerveau bien disposé, que de naître d'un père qui soit roi? Vous étiez un grand génie: mais demandez à tous les philosophes à quoi il tenoit que vous ne fussiez stupide et hébété'; presque à rien, à une petite position de fibres; enfin, à quelque chose que l'anatomie la plus délicate ne sauroit jamais appercevoir. Et après cela, ces messieurs les beaux-esprits nous oserorit soutenir qu'il n'y a qu'eux qui aient des biens indépendans du hasard, et ils se croiront en droit de mépriser tous les autres hommes?
Erasmus
According to you, being rich or having a spirit are of equal merit.
A votre compte, être riche ou avoir de l'esprit, c'est le même mérite.
Charles V
To have a spirit is a happier chance, but at bottom it is always a chance.
Avoir de l'esprit est un hasard plus heureux; mais au fond, c'est toujours un hasard.
Erasmus
Then everything is chance?
Tout est donc hasard ?
Charles V
Yes, provided that one gives this name to an order that one doesn't know at all. I leave you to judge if I haven't stripped men much better than you have; you only took some advantages of birth away from them, and I even took away the spirit. If before founding their vanity on something, people wanted to make sure that it really belonged to them, there would hardly be any vanity in the world.
Oui, pourvu qu'on donne ce nom à un ordre que l'on ne connoît point. Je vous laisse à juger si je n'ai pas dépouillé les hommes encore mieux que vous n'aviez fait; vous ne leur ôtiez que quelques avantages de la naissance, et je leur ôte jusqu'à ceux de l'esprit. Si avant que de tirer vanité d'une chose, ils vouloient s'assurer bien qu'elle leur appartînt, il n'y auroit guère de vanité dans le monde.
Dialogue III
Dialogue III
On the little solidity there is in pleasures
Elizabeth I of England, the Duke of Alençon
Elisabeth d'Angleterre, Le Duc d'Alençon
The Duke
But why did you flatter me with the hope of marrying you for so long, when you had resolutely decided in your soul not to go through with it?
Mais pourquoi m'avez-vous si long-temps flatté de l'espérance de vous épouser, puisque vous étiez résolue dans l'âme à ne rien conclure?
Elizabeth
I tricked many other people over the same thing who were no less worthy than you. I was the Penelope of my century. You, your brother the Duke of Anjou, the Archduke, the King of Sweden, you all courted me and wanted an island much larger than Ithaca. I held you all breathless for a few years and in the end laughed at you.
J'en ai bien trompé d'autres qui ne valaient pas moins que vous. J'ai été la Pénélope de mon siècle. Vous, le duc d'Anjou votre frère, l'archiduc, le roi de Suède, vous étiez tous des poursuivans, qui en vouliez à une île bien plus considérable que celle d'Ithaque; je vous ai tenus en haleine pendant une longue suite d'années, et à la fin, je me suis moquée de vous.
The Duke
There are a few dead people down here who would not completely agree that you altogether resembled Penelope; but one will never find a comparison that is perfect in every detail.
Il y a ici de certains morts, qui ne tomberaient pas d'accord que vous ressemblassiez tout-à-fait à Pénélope; mais on ne trouve point de comparaisons qui ne soient défectueuses en quelque point.
Elizabeth
If you weren't still as scatterbrained as you used to be, and could think about what you were saying...
Si vous n'étiez pas encore aussi étourdi que vous l'étiez, et que vous puissiez songer à ce que vous dites....
The Duke
Good, I advise you to be serious. Look at how you have always bragged about your virginity; witness the great region of America to which you gave the name Virginia, in memory of the most doubtful of all your qualities. This country would be very badly named if it didn't have the good luck of being on another continent; but that's not important, that's not what we're talking about. Give me one small reason for this mysterious conduct you persisted in, and for all these plans of marriage that came to nothing. Did the six marriages of your father Henry VIII teach you never to marry, just as the perpetual running about of Charles V taught Philip II never to leave Madrid?
Bon, je vous conseille de prendre votre sérieux. Voilà comme vous avez toujours fait des fanfaronnades de virginité; témoin cette grande contrée d'Amérique, à laquelle vous fîtes donner le nom de Virginie, en mémoire de la plus douteuse de toutes vos qualités. Ce pays-là serait assez mal nommé, si ce n'était que par bonheur il est dans un autre monde : mais il n'importe ; ce n'est pas là de quoi il s'agit. Rendez-moi un peu raison de cette conduite mystérieuse que vous avez tenue, et de tous ces projets de mariage qui n'ont abouti à rien. Est-ce que les six mariages de Henri VIII votre père vous apprirent à ne vous point marier, comme les courses perpétuelles de Charles V apprirent à Philippe II à ne point sortir de Madrid?
Elizabeth
I could agree to the reason you provided; in fact, my father passed his whole life in getting married, then getting unmarried, then denying that women were his wives, then cutting their heads off. But the true reason for my conduct is that I found nothing more pleasant than to form plans, make preparations, and execute nothing. What people have wanted most ardently was valued less when they obtained it, and things never pass from our imagination to reality without losing something. You came to England to marry me; everywhere were balls, parties, festivities, I even went so far as to give you a ring. Even then everything was as jolly as possible in the world; everything only consisted in preparations and ideas; and so what was agreeable in marriage was already used up. I kept myself like that and sent you back home.
Je pourrais m'en tenir à la raison que vous me fournissez; en effet, mon père passa toute sa vie à se marier et à se démarier, a répudier quelques unes de ses femmes, et à faire couper la tête aux autres. Mais le vrai secret de ma conduite , c'est que je trouvais qu'il n'y avait rien de plus joli que de former des desseins, de faire des préparatifs, et de n'exécuter point. Ce qu'on a le plus ardemment désiré, diminue du prix dès qu'on l'obtient; et les choses ne passent point de notre imagination à la réalité, qu'il n'y ait de la perte. Vous venez en Angleterre pour m'épouser: ce ne sont que bals, que têtes, que réjouissances.; je vais même jusqu'à vous donner un anneau. Jusques-là, tout est le plus riant du monde; tout ne consiste qu'en apprêts et en idées: aussi ce qu'il y a d'agréable dans le mariage est déjà épuisé. Je m'en tiens là, et vous renvoie.
The Duke
Frankly, your maxims don't agree with me at all; I wanted something more than chimeras.
Franchement, vos maximes ne m'eussent point accommodé; j'eusse voulu quelque chose de plus que des chimères.
Elizabeth
Ah! If one took chimeras away from men, what pleasure would be left to them? I clearly see that you did not enjoy all of the pleasures offered to you in life; but in good truth, you are very unfortunate for losing them.
Ah! si l'on ôtait les chimères aux hommes, quel plaisir leur resterait-il? Je vois bien que vous n'aurez pas senti tous les agrémens qui étaient dans votre vie; mais en vérité vous êtes bien malheureux qu'ils aient été perdus pour vous.
The Duke
What! What pleasures were in my life? I never succeeded in anything. I thought I would be king four times; at first of Poland, then of England, then of the Netherlands; finally, France seemed to belong to me; however, I arrived there and didn't rule.
Quoi! quels agrémens y avait-il dans ma vie? Rien ne m'a jamais réussi. J'ai pensé quatre fois être roi: d'abord il s'agissait de la Pologne, ensuite de l'Angleterre et des Pays-Bas, enfin la France devait apparemment m'appartenir; cependant je suis arrivé ici sans avoir régné.
Elizabeth
And there is the happiness which you didn't notice. Always imaginations, hopes, and never realities. You did nothing but prepare to be royalty your whole life, just as I did nothing during my whole life except prepare to be married.
Et voilà ce bonheur dont vous ne vous êtes pas aperçu. Toujours des imaginations, des espérances, et jamais de réalité. Vous n'avez fait que vous préparer à la royauté pendant toute votre vie, comme je n'ai fait pendant toute la mienne que me préparer au mariage.
The Duke
But just as I think an effective marriage would have agreed with you, I swear that true royalty would have been very much to my taste.
Mais comme je crois qu'un mariage effectif pouvait vous convenir, je vous avoue qu'une véritable royauté eût été assez de mon goût.
Elizabeth
Pleasures are not solid enough to allow getting to the bottom of them; one must only touch on them. They resemble those marshy lands on which one has to run lightly or else one loses ones footing.
Les plaisirs ne sont point assez solides pour souffrir qu'on les approfondisse; il ne faut que les effleurer: ils ressemblent à ces terres marécageuses, sur lesquelles on est obligé de courir légèrement, sans y arrêter jamais le pied.
Dialogue IV
Dialogue IV
On being crazy
Sur la folie
Guillem de Cabestany, Albert Frederick of Brandenburg
Guillaume de Cabestan, Albert-Frédéric de Brandebourg
A. F. of Branden.
You went as crazy as myself, and I find that endearing. Tell me your little story; how did it happen?
Je vous aime mieux d'avoir été fou aussi bien que moi. Apprenez-moi un peu l'histoire de votre folie: comment vint-elle?
G. de Cabestany
I was a troubadour, and profoundly esteemed in my century - which only brought me misfortune. I fell in love with a lady; my poems made her famous. She liked them so much that she became afraid I would make them for someone else one day; so, to be sure that my muse would stay faithful to her, she gave me a witches brew that made me crazy, unable to compose.
J'étais un poète provençal, fort estimé dans mon siècle, ce qui ne fit que me porter malheur. Je devins amoureux d'une dame, que mes ouvrages rendirent illustre: mais elle prit tant de goût à mes vers , qu'elle craignit que je n'en fisse un jour pour quelque autre; et afin de s'assurer de la fidélité de ma muse, elle me donna un maudit breuvage, qui me fit tourner l'esprit, et me mit hors d'état de composer.
A. F. of Branden.
For how long have you been dead?
Combien y a-t-il que vous êtes mort?
G. de Cabestany
It's been about four hundred years.
Il y a peut-être quatre cents ans.
A. F. of Branden.
Poets must have been pretty rare in your century, since people thought highly enough of them to poison them. It's too bad you weren't born in my century; you would have been able to write verses about all kinds of beautiful ladies without any fear of being poisoned.
Il fallait que les poètes fussent bien rares dans votre siècle, puisqu'on les estimait assez pour les empoisonner de cette manière-là. Je suis fâché que vous ne soyez pas né dans le siècle où j'ai vécu; vous eussiez pû faire des vers pour toutes sortes de belles, sans aucune crainte de poison.
G. de Cabestany
I know. I haven't seen any of your century's poets come down here complaining of what happened to me. But you - how did you go mad?
Je le sais. Je ne vois aucun de tous ces beaux esprits qui viennent ici se plaindre d'avoir eu ma destinée. Mais vous, de quelle manière devîntes-vous fou?
A. F. of Branden.
Very reasonably. There was a king who went crazy after seeing a ghost in the forest: that's nothing. What I saw was much more terrible.
D'une manière fort raisonnable. Un roi l'est devenu pour avoir vu un spectre dans une forêt; ce n'était pas grand'chose: mais ce que je vis était beaucoup plus terrible.
G. de Cabestany
Humph! What did you see?
Eh! que vîtes-vous?
A. F. of Branden.
My wedding day. I was marrying Marie-Eléonore de Clèves; and as I considered what was true about marriage during the ceremony, I lost my mind.
L'appareil de mes noces. J'épousais Marie-Eléonore de Clèves, et je fis, pendant cette grande fête, des réflexions sur le mariage, si judicieuses, que j'en perdis le jugement.
G. de Cabestany
Did you have some intervals in your sickness when you came to?
Aviez-vous dans votre maladie quelques bons intervalles?
A. F. of Branden.
I did.
Oui.
G. de Cabestany
Too bad; and I was unluckier still; my understanding came back to me completely.
Tant pis: et moi je fus encore plus malheureux; l'esprit me revint tout-à-fait.
A. F. of Branden.
I would never have thought that would be a misfortune.
Je n'eusse jamais cru que ce fût là un malheur!
G. de Cabestany
When one is crazy, it's necessary to be completely crazy and never stop. Alternating reason and folly and complete returns to reason only belong to those little nuts who go crazy on accident, and who are exceptions. But look at the people who pop into being every day, the ones who people the earth; they are always equally crazy, and never get better.
Quand on est fou, il faut l'être entièrement, et ne cesser jamais de l'être. Ces alternatives de raison et de folie n'appartiennent qu'à ces petits fous qui ne le sont que par accident, et dont le nombre n'est nullement considérable. Mais voyez ceux que la nature produit tous les jours dans son cours ordinaire, et dont tout le monde est peuplé; ils sont toujours également fous, et ils ne se guérissent jamais.
A. F. of Branden.
For myself, I would have thought the less crazy, the better.
Pour moi, je me serais figuré que le moins qu'on pouvait être fou, c'était toujours le mieux.
G. de Cabestany
Ah! Then you don't know why people are crazy? Because otherwise they would see themselves clearly. Since the sight of oneself is very sad and always inconvenient, madness mustn't abandon people for a single moment.
Ah! vous ne savez donc pas à quoi sert la folie? Elle sert à empêcher qu'on ne se connaisse: car la vue de soi-même est bien triste, et comme il n'est jamais temps de se connaître, il ne faut pas que la folie abandonne les hommes un seul moment.
A. F. of Branden.
That's really beautiful; you won't persuade me that anyone is crazy except for people like us. Everyone else is reasonable; otherwise losing one's reason wouldn't make any difference; and people would not be able to distinguish lunatics from people with good sense.
Vous avez beau dire, vous ne me persuaderez point qu'il y ait d'autres fous que ceux qui le sont comme nous l'avons été tous deux. Tout le reste des hommes a de la raison; autrement ce ne serait rien perdre que de perdre l'esprit, et on ne distinguerait point les frénétiques d'avec les gens de bon sens.
G. de Cabestany
Lunatics are only people who have a different way of being crazy. Since people are all crazy in the same way, they adjust to each other so easily that their madnesses become the basis for the strongest ties in human society; observe the desire for immortality, that false glory; and many other principles, which serve as the motivation for everything in the world; and people only call certain people lunatics who are, so to say, unfashionable, and whose madness doesn't agree with everyone else’s', and hinders them in daily life.
Les frénétiques sont seulement des fous d'un autre genre. Les folies de tous les hommes étant de même nature, elles se sont si aisément ajustées ensemble, qu'elles ont servi à faire les plus forts liens de la société humaine; témoin ce désir d'immortalité, cette fausse gloire; et beaucoup d'autres principes, sur quoi roule
tout ce qui se fait dans le monde; et l'on n'appelle plus fous, que de certains fous qui sont, pour ainsi dire, hors d'oeuvre, et dont la folie n'a pu s'accorder avec celles de' tous les autres, ni entrer dans le commerce ordinaire de la vie.
A. F. of Branden.
Lunatics are so crazy that most often even they recognize each other as such; but other people consider one another sane.
Les frénétiques sont si fous , que le plus souvent ils se traitent de fous les uns les autres; mais les autres hommes se traitent de personnes sages.
G. de Cabestany
Ah! What are you saying? All men shake their fingers at each other, and that is very judiciously established by nature. The hermit mocks the courtier; but to make up for it, he never goes to the court to trouble him; the courtier mocks the hermit, but he leaves him alone in his retreat. If there were some role that people knew was the only sane one, everyone would want to fill it, and there would be too much of a crowd; it's worth more that people divide themselves into many small groups which never bother each other, laughing at what the others do.
Ah! que dites-vous? tous les hommes s'entremontrent au doigt, et cet ordre est fort judicieusement établi par la nature. Le solitaire se moque du courtisan; mais en récompense il ne le va point troubler à la cour: le courtisan se moque du solitaire; mais il le laisse en repos dans sa retraite. S'il y avait quelque parti qui fût reconnu pour le seul parti raisonnable, tout le monde voudrait l'embrasser, et il y aurait trop de presse; il vaut mieux qu'on se divise en plusieurs petites troupes, qui ne s'entr'embarrassent point, parce que les unes rient de ce que les autres font.
A. F. of Branden.
Dead though you are, I find your arguments very mad; you still haven't recovered from that witches' brew.
Tout mort que vous êtes, je vous trouve bien fou avec vos raisonnemens; vous n'êtes pas encore bien guéri du breuvage qu'on vous donna.
G. de Cabestany
That is how every madman thinks of other people. A person who was truly sane would stand out too much; but the opinion that they are sane equalizes all men, and satisfies them just as much.
Et voilà l'idée qu'il faut qu'un fou conçoive toujours d'un autre. La vraie sagesse distinguerait trop ceux qui la posséderaient: mais l'opinion de sagesse égale tous les hommes, et ne les satisfait pas moins.
Dialogue V
Dialogue V
On the power of women
Sur le pouvoir des femmes
Agnes Sorel, Roxelana
Agnès Sorel, Roxelane
A. Sorel
To tell you the truth, I don't understand your Turkish gallantry at all. The beautiful women in a seraglio have a lover who only has to say I want her, they never get to enjoy resisting him, and they never give him the pleasure of having won them; that is to say, all the pleasures of love are lost to Sultans and their mistresses.
A vous dire le vrai, je ne comprends point votre galanterie turque. Les belles du sérail ont un amant qui n'a qu'à dire: je le veux; elles ne goûtent jamais le plaisir de la résistance, et elles ne lui fournissent jamais le plaisir de la victoire; c'est-à-dire que tous les agrémens de l'amour sont perdus pour les sultans et pour les sultanes.
Roxelana
What do you want? Turkish Emperors, who are extremely jealous of their authority, have neglected the refined sweetness of love for political reasons. They are afraid that if a beautiful woman didn't obey them absolutely, they would have too much power over their spirit, and would interfere too much in their decisions and affairs.
Que voulez-vous? Les empereurs turcs, qui sont extrêmement jaloux de leur autorité, ont négligé, par des raisons de politique, ces douceurs de l'amour si raffinées. Ils ont craint que les belles qui ne dépendraient pas absolument d'eux, n'usurpassent trop de pouvoir sur leur esprit, et ne se mêlassent trop des affaires.
A. Sorel
Ho, well, who knows if that would be a misfortune? Love is sometimes good for a lot of things; and if I, the very person speaking to you, had not been the mistress of the King of France, and I hadn't had very much power over him, who knows where France would be today. Have you heard about how hopeless our affairs were under Charles VII and how they were reduced to such a state that the English were almost completely our masters?
Hé bien , que savent-ils si ce serait un malheur? L'amour est quelquefois bon à bien des choses; et moi qui vous parle, si je n'avais été maîtresse d'un roi de France, et si je n'avais eu beaucoup d'empire sur lui, je ne sais où en serait la France à l'heure qu'il est. Avez-vous ouï dire combien nos affaires étaient désespérées sous Charles VII, et en quel état se trouvait réduit tout le royaume, dont les Anglais étaient presque entièrement les maîtres.
Roxelana
Yes, the story caused quite a stir, and I know about a certain virgin who saved France. Then you were that virgin? How were you the mistress of the King at the same time?
Oui; comme cette histoire a fait grand bruit, je sais qu'une certaine pucelle sauva la France. C'est donc vous qui étiez cette pucelle là? Et comment étiez-vous en même temps maîtresse du roi?
A. Sorel
You're mistaken; I have nothing in common with the virgin you're thinking of. The King I was mistress of wanted to abandon his kingdom to the foreign invaders, and went to hide in a mountain range where it wouldn't be easy to follow him. I devised a stratagem to dissuade him from this plan. I summoned an astrologer who I had secretly met with before, and after he pretended to study the time of my birth, he told me in the presence of Charles VII that either all the stars were villains or that I would be loved for a very long time by a great King. Immediately I said to Charles, 'Then you will not mind, Sire, if I go to the English court; because you do not want to be King, and there's not enough time before they invade for you to fulfill my destiny.' The fear that he had of losing me made him resolve to be the King of France, and from then on he began to re-establish himself. See how France is obliged to love, and how gallant this country should be, if only out of gratitude.
Vous vous trompez: je n'ai rien de commun avec la pucelle dont on vous a parlé. Le roi, dont j'étais aimée, voulait abandonner son royamme aux usurpateurs étrangers, et s'aller cacher dans un pays de montagnes, où je n'eusse pas été trop aise de le suivre. Je m'avisai d'un stratagême pour le détourner de ce dessein. Je fis venir un astrologue, avec qui je m'entendais secrètement; et après qu'il eût fait semblant de bien étudier ma nativité, il me dit un jour, en présence de Charles VII, que tous les astres étaient trompeurs, ou que j'inspirerais une longue passion à un grand roi. Aussitôt je dis à Charles: « Vous ne trouverez donc pas mauvais, Sire, que je passe à la cour d'Angleterre: car vous ne voulez plus être roi; et il n'y a pas assez de temps que vous m'aimez pour avoir rempli ma destinée. » La crainte qu'il eut de me perdre lui fit prendre la résolution d'être roi de France, et il commença dès lors à se rétablir. Voyez combien la France est obligée à l'amour, et combien ce royaume doit être galant, quand ce ne serait que par reconnaissance.
Roxelana
It's true, but then I remember that virgin; what did she do? Could history be so mistaken as to attribute to a young virgin peasant what was accomplished by a woman of the court, the Mistress of the King?
Il est vrai; mais j'en reviens à ma pucelle. Qu'a-t-elle donc fait? L'histoire se serait-elle assez trompée, pour attribuer à une jeune paysanne, pucelle, ce qui appartenait à une dame de la cour, maîtresse du roi.
A. Sorel
That history should be mistaken on this point is not so amazing. It is, however, very true that the virgin really animated the soldiers; but it was I who animated the King. She was a great help to him when she carried arms against the English, but without me she never would have. Finally, you won't doubt the part I played in this great affair when you witness the homage that one of Charles VII's successors paid me in this quatrain:
Gentle Agnes, you merit more honor
for having restored France
than can come from inside the cloister
of a nun or a very pious hermit.
What do you think, Roxelana? You must admit that if I had been a woman in a harem like you, and had not had the right to menace Charles VII in the way that I did, he would have been lost.
Quand l'histoire se serait trompée jusqu'à ce point, ce ne serait pas une si grande merveille. Cependant il est sûr que la pucelle anima beaucoup les soldats: mais moi, j'avais auparavant animé le roi. Elle fut d'un grand secours à ce prince, qu'elle trouva ayant les armes à la main contre les Anglais; mais sans moi elle ne l'eût pas trouvé en cet état. Enfin vous ne douterez plus de la part quej'ai dans cette grande affaire, quand vous saurez le témoignage qu'un des successeurs de Charles VII a rendu en ma faveur dans ce quatrain:
Gentille Agnès, plus d'honneur en mérite,
La cause étant de France recouvrer,
Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrer,
Close nonain, ou bien dévot ermite.
Qu'en dites-vous, Roxelane? Vous m'avouerez que si j'eusse été une sultane comme vous, et que je n'eusse pas eu le droit de faire à Charles VII la menace que je lui fis, il était perdu.
Roxelana
I admire the vanity that you take away from this little action. You had no trouble in acquiring a great deal of power over the spirit of your lover, you who were free and master of yourself; but me, complete slave that I was, I was still able to have the Sultan serve me. You made Charles VII king nearly despite himself, and me, I made Solomon my husband despite himself.
J'admire la vanité que vous tirez de cette petite action. Vous n'aviez nulle peine à acquérir beaucoup de pouvoir sur l'esprit d'un amant, vous qui étiez libre et maîtresse de vous-même; mais moi, toute esclave que j'étais, je ne laissai pas de m'asservir le sultan. Vous avez fait Charles VII roi presque malgré lui; et moi, de Soliman j'en fis mon époux, malgré qu'il en eût.
A. Sorel
What? People say that Sultans never marry.
Hé quoi! on dit que les sultans n'épousent jamais?
Roxelana
I know; however, I took it into my head to marry Solomon, though I could only make him marry me by making him hope for some happiness that he had not obtained yet. You're going to hear a stratagem more subtle than yours. I began to build temples, and to do many other pious actions; after which I pretended to be profoundly melancholy. The Sultan asked me why a thousand and two thousand times; and when I did everything that was necessary, I told him that the reason I was upset was that all my pious actions, as the learned people had told me, were never heard by God, since I was a slave who could only address herself to the Emperor Solomon. Immediately Solomon set me free so that I could be rewarded for my pious actions. But when he wanted to sleep with me as usual, and treated me like a woman in a Seraglio, I pretended to be very surprised, and told him with great seriousness that he had no rights over a free woman. Solomon had a sensitive conscience; he went to consult a learned lawyer, with whom I had an understanding. His response was that the Sultan should make sure he didn't ask me to do anything, since I was no longer a slave; and that if he didn't marry me, I couldn't sleep with him. So he became more amorous than ever. There was only one thing he could do, but it was extraordinary, and even dangerous because of it's novelty; however, he did it and married me.
J'en conviens; cependant je me mis en tête d'épouser Soliman, quoique je ne pusse l'amener au mariage par l'espérance d'un bonheur qu'il n'eût pas encore obtenu. Vous allez entendre un stratagême plus fin que le vôtre. Je commençai à bâtir des temples et à faire beaucoup d'autres actions pieuses; après quoi je fis paraître une mélancolie profonde. Le sultan m'en demanda la cause mille et mille fois; et quand j'eus fait toutes les façons nécessaires, je lui dis que le sujet de mon chagrin était que toutes mes bonnes actions, à ce que m'avaient dit nos docteurs, ne me servaient de rien, et que comme j'étais esclave, je ne travaillais que pour Soliman mon seigneur. Aussitôt Soliman m'affranchit, afin que le mérite de mes bonnes actions tombât sur moi-même: mais quand il voulut vivre avec moi comme à l'ordinaire, et me traiter en sultane du sérail, je lui marquai beaucoup de surprise, et lui représentai, avec un grand sérieux, qu'il n'avait nul droit sur la personne d'une femme libre. Soliman avait la conscience délicate; il alla consulter ce cas à un docteur de la loi, avec qui j'avais intelligence. Sa réponse fut, que le Sultan se gardât bien de prendre rien sur moi, qui n'étais plus son esclave, et que s'il ne m'épousait, je ne pouvais être à lui. Alors le voilà plus amoureux que jamais. Il n'avait qu'un seul parti à prendre, mais un parti fort extraordinaire et même dangereux, à cause de la nouveauté, cependant il le prit, et m'épousa.
A. Sorel
I admit that it's something to subject someone who has taken so many precautions against us.
J'avoue qu'il est beau d'assujétir ceux qui se précautionnent tant contre notre pouvoir.
Roxelana
Men are in a pretty position; when one stirs up their passion, one can lead them wherever one likes. If someone brought me back to life and presented me with the most imperious man in the world, I could do whatever I wanted with him, provided that I had a lot of wit, enough beauty, and little love.
Les hommes ont beau faire, quand on les prend par les passions, on les mène où l'on veut. Qu'on me fasse revivre, et qu'on me donne l'homme du monde le plus impérieux, je ferai de lui tout ce qu'il me plaira , pourvu que j'aie beaucoup d'esprit, assez de beauté, et peu d'amour.
Dialogue V
On the power of women
Sur le pouvoir des femmes
Agnes Sorel, Roxelana
Agnès Sorel, Roxelane
A. Sorel
To tell you the truth, I don't understand your Turkish gallantry at all. The beautiful women in a seraglio have a lover who only has to say I want her, they never get to enjoy resisting him, and they never give him the pleasure of having won them; that is to say, all the pleasures of love are lost to Sultans and their mistresses.
A vous dire le vrai, je ne comprends point votre galanterie turque. Les belles du sérail ont un amant qui n'a qu'à dire: je le veux; elles ne goûtent jamais le plaisir de la résistance, et elles ne lui fournissent jamais le plaisir de la victoire; c'est-à-dire que tous les agrémens de l'amour sont perdus pour les sultans et pour les sultanes.
Roxelana
What do you want? Turkish Emperors, who are extremely jealous of their authority, have neglected the refined sweetness of love for political reasons. They are afraid that if a beautiful woman didn't obey them absolutely, they would have too much power over their spirit, and would interfere too much in their decisions and affairs.
Que voulez-vous? Les empereurs turcs, qui sont extrêmement jaloux de leur autorité, ont négligé, par des raisons de politique, ces douceurs de l'amour si raffinées. Ils ont craint que les belles qui ne dépendraient pas absolument d'eux, n'usurpassent trop de pouvoir sur leur esprit, et ne se mêlassent trop des affaires.
A. Sorel
Ho, well, who knows if that would be a misfortune? Love is sometimes good for a lot of things; and if I, the very person speaking to you, had not been the mistress of the King of France, and I hadn't had very much power over him, who knows where France would be today. Have you heard about how hopeless our affairs were under Charles VII and how they were reduced to such a state that the English were almost completely our masters?
Hé bien , que savent-ils si ce serait un malheur? L'amour est quelquefois bon à bien des choses; et moi qui vous parle, si je n'avais été maîtresse d'un roi de France, et si je n'avais eu beaucoup d'empire sur lui, je ne sais où en serait la France à l'heure qu'il est. Avez-vous ouï dire combien nos affaires étaient désespérées sous Charles VII, et en quel état se trouvait réduit tout le royaume, dont les Anglais étaient presque entièrement les maîtres.
Roxelana
Yes, the story caused quite a stir, and I know about a certain virgin who saved France. Then you were that virgin? How were you the mistress of the King at the same time?
Oui; comme cette histoire a fait grand bruit, je sais qu'une certaine pucelle sauva la France. C'est donc vous qui étiez cette pucelle là? Et comment étiez-vous en même temps maîtresse du roi?
A. Sorel
You're mistaken; I have nothing in common with the virgin you're thinking of. The King I was mistress of wanted to abandon his kingdom to the foreign invaders, and went to hide in a mountain range where it wouldn't be easy to follow him. I devised a stratagem to dissuade him from this plan. I summoned an astrologer who I had secretly met with before, and after he pretended to study the time of my birth, he told me in the presence of Charles VII that either all the stars were villains or that I would be loved for a very long time by a great King. Immediately I said to Charles, 'Then you will not mind, Sire, if I go to the English court; because you do not want to be King, and there's not enough time before they invade for you to fulfill my destiny.' The fear that he had of losing me made him resolve to be the King of France, and from then on he began to re-establish himself. See how France is obliged to love, and how gallant this country should be, if only out of gratitude.
Vous vous trompez: je n'ai rien de commun avec la pucelle dont on vous a parlé. Le roi, dont j'étais aimée, voulait abandonner son royamme aux usurpateurs étrangers, et s'aller cacher dans un pays de montagnes, où je n'eusse pas été trop aise de le suivre. Je m'avisai d'un stratagême pour le détourner de ce dessein. Je fis venir un astrologue, avec qui je m'entendais secrètement; et après qu'il eût fait semblant de bien étudier ma nativité, il me dit un jour, en présence de Charles VII, que tous les astres étaient trompeurs, ou que j'inspirerais une longue passion à un grand roi. Aussitôt je dis à Charles: « Vous ne trouverez donc pas mauvais, Sire, que je passe à la cour d'Angleterre: car vous ne voulez plus être roi; et il n'y a pas assez de temps que vous m'aimez pour avoir rempli ma destinée. » La crainte qu'il eut de me perdre lui fit prendre la résolution d'être roi de France, et il commença dès lors à se rétablir. Voyez combien la France est obligée à l'amour, et combien ce royaume doit être galant, quand ce ne serait que par reconnaissance.
Roxelana
It's true, but then I remember that virgin; what did she do? Could history be so mistaken as to attribute to a young virgin peasant what was accomplished by a woman of the court, the Mistress of the King?
Il est vrai; mais j'en reviens à ma pucelle. Qu'a-t-elle donc fait? L'histoire se serait-elle assez trompée, pour attribuer à une jeune paysanne, pucelle, ce qui appartenait à une dame de la cour, maîtresse du roi.
A. Sorel
That history should be mistaken on this point is not so amazing. It is, however, very true that the virgin really animated the soldiers; but it was I who animated the King. She was a great help to him when she carried arms against the English, but without me she never would have. Finally, you won't doubt the part I played in this great affair when you witness the homage that one of Charles VII's successors paid me in this quatrain:
Gentle Agnes, you merit more honor
for having restored France
than can come from inside the cloister
of a nun or a very pious hermit.
What do you think, Roxelana? You must admit that if I had been a woman in a harem like you, and had not had the right to menace Charles VII in the way that I did, he would have been lost.
Quand l'histoire se serait trompée jusqu'à ce point, ce ne serait pas une si grande merveille. Cependant il est sûr que la pucelle anima beaucoup les soldats: mais moi, j'avais auparavant animé le roi. Elle fut d'un grand secours à ce prince, qu'elle trouva ayant les armes à la main contre les Anglais; mais sans moi elle ne l'eût pas trouvé en cet état. Enfin vous ne douterez plus de la part quej'ai dans cette grande affaire, quand vous saurez le témoignage qu'un des successeurs de Charles VII a rendu en ma faveur dans ce quatrain:
Gentille Agnès, plus d'honneur en mérite,
La cause étant de France recouvrer,
Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrer,
Close nonain, ou bien dévot ermite.
Qu'en dites-vous, Roxelane? Vous m'avouerez que si j'eusse été une sultane comme vous, et que je n'eusse pas eu le droit de faire à Charles VII la menace que je lui fis, il était perdu.
Roxelana
I admire the vanity that you take away from this little action. You had no trouble in acquiring a great deal of power over the spirit of your lover, you who were free and master of yourself; but me, complete slave that I was, I was still able to have the Sultan serve me. You made Charles VII king nearly despite himself, and me, I made Solomon my husband despite himself.
J'admire la vanité que vous tirez de cette petite action. Vous n'aviez nulle peine à acquérir beaucoup de pouvoir sur l'esprit d'un amant, vous qui étiez libre et maîtresse de vous-même; mais moi, toute esclave que j'étais, je ne laissai pas de m'asservir le sultan. Vous avez fait Charles VII roi presque malgré lui; et moi, de Soliman j'en fis mon époux, malgré qu'il en eût.
A. Sorel
What? People say that Sultans never marry.
Hé quoi! on dit que les sultans n'épousent jamais?
Roxelana
I know; however, I took it into my head to marry Solomon, though I could only make him marry me by making him hope for some happiness that he had not obtained yet. You're going to hear a stratagem more subtle than yours. I began to build temples, and to do many other pious actions; after which I pretended to be profoundly melancholy. The Sultan asked me why a thousand and two thousand times; and when I did everything that was necessary, I told him that the reason I was upset was that all my pious actions, as the learned people had told me, were never heard by God, since I was a slave who could only address herself to the Emperor Solomon. Immediately Solomon set me free so that I could be rewarded for my pious actions. But when he wanted to sleep with me as usual, and treated me like a woman in a Seraglio, I pretended to be very surprised, and told him with great seriousness that he had no rights over a free woman. Solomon had a sensitive conscience; he went to consult a learned lawyer, with whom I had an understanding. His response was that the Sultan should make sure he didn't ask me to do anything, since I was no longer a slave; and that if he didn't marry me, I couldn't sleep with him. So he became more amorous than ever. There was only one thing he could do, but it was extraordinary, and even dangerous because of it's novelty; however, he did it and married me.
J'en conviens; cependant je me mis en tête d'épouser Soliman, quoique je ne pusse l'amener au mariage par l'espérance d'un bonheur qu'il n'eût pas encore obtenu. Vous allez entendre un stratagême plus fin que le vôtre. Je commençai à bâtir des temples et à faire beaucoup d'autres actions pieuses; après quoi je fis paraître une mélancolie profonde. Le sultan m'en demanda la cause mille et mille fois; et quand j'eus fait toutes les façons nécessaires, je lui dis que le sujet de mon chagrin était que toutes mes bonnes actions, à ce que m'avaient dit nos docteurs, ne me servaient de rien, et que comme j'étais esclave, je ne travaillais que pour Soliman mon seigneur. Aussitôt Soliman m'affranchit, afin que le mérite de mes bonnes actions tombât sur moi-même: mais quand il voulut vivre avec moi comme à l'ordinaire, et me traiter en sultane du sérail, je lui marquai beaucoup de surprise, et lui représentai, avec un grand sérieux, qu'il n'avait nul droit sur la personne d'une femme libre. Soliman avait la conscience délicate; il alla consulter ce cas à un docteur de la loi, avec qui j'avais intelligence. Sa réponse fut, que le Sultan se gardât bien de prendre rien sur moi, qui n'étais plus son esclave, et que s'il ne m'épousait, je ne pouvais être à lui. Alors le voilà plus amoureux que jamais. Il n'avait qu'un seul parti à prendre, mais un parti fort extraordinaire et même dangereux, à cause de la nouveauté, cependant il le prit, et m'épousa.
A. Sorel
I admit that it's something to subject someone who has taken so many precautions against us.
J'avoue qu'il est beau d'assujétir ceux qui se précautionnent tant contre notre pouvoir.
Roxelana
Men are in a pretty position; when one stirs up their passion, one can lead them wherever one likes. If someone brought me back to life and presented me with the most imperious man in the world, I could do whatever I wanted with him, provided that I had a lot of wit, enough beauty, and little love.
Les hommes ont beau faire, quand on les prend par les passions, on les mène où l'on veut. Qu'on me fasse revivre, et qu'on me donne l'homme du monde le plus impérieux, je ferai de lui tout ce qu'il me plaira , pourvu que j'aie beaucoup d'esprit, assez de beauté, et peu d'amour.