reservation in the thing; for my part, I am content to know no more of
the business than what they would have me employ myself in, nor desire
that my knowledge should exceed or restrict what I have to say. If I
must serve for an instrument of deceit, let it be at least with a safe
conscience: I will not be reputed a servant either so affectionate or so
loyal as to be fit to betray any one: he who is unfaithful to himself, is
excusably so to his master. But they are princes who do not accept men
by halves, and despise limited and conditional services: I cannot help
it: I frankly tell them how far I can go; for a slave I should not be,
but to reason, and I can hardly submit even to that. And they also are
to blame to exact from a freeman the same subjection and obligation to
their service that they do from him they have made and bought, or whose
fortune particularly and expressly depends upon theirs. The laws have
delivered me from a great anxiety; they have chosen a side for me, and
given me a master; all other superiority and obligation ought to be
relative to that, and cut, off from all other. Yet this is not to say,
that if my affection should otherwise incline me, my hand should
presently obey it; the will and desire are a law to themselves; but
actions must receive commission from the public appointment.

All this proceeding of mine is a little dissonant from the ordinary
forms; it would produce no great effects, nor be of any long duration;
innocence itself could not, in this age of ours, either negotiate without
dissimulation, or traffic without lying; and, indeed, public employments
are by no means for my palate: what my profession requires, I perform
after the most private manner that I can. Being young, I was engaged up
to the ears in business, and it succeeded well; but I disengaged myself
in good time. I have often since avoided meddling in it, rarely
accepted, and never asked it; keeping my back still turned to ambition;
but if not like rowers who so advance backward, yet so, at the same time,