I have a
friend whom I have attached closely to myself, a colonel in the Army
of the Loire, who has just been transferred into the _garde royale_. He
has taken my advice and turned ultra-royalist; he is not one of those
fools who never change their opinions. Of all pieces of advice, my
cherub, I would give you this--don't stick to your opinions any more
than to your words. If any one asks you for them, let him have them
--at a price. A man who prides himself on going in a straight line
through life is an idiot who believes in infallibility. There are no
such things as principles; there are only events, and there are no
laws but those of expediency: a man of talent accepts events and the
circumstances in which he finds himself, and turns everything to his
own ends. If laws and principles were fixed and invariable, nations
would not change them as readily as we change our shirts. The
individual is not obliged to be more particular than the nation. A man
whose services to France have been of the very slightest is a fetich
looked on with superstitious awe because he has always seen everything
in red; but he is good, at the most, to be put into the Museum of Arts
and Crafts, among the automatic machines, and labeled La Fayette;
while the prince at whom everybody flings a stone, the man who
despises humanity so much that he spits as many oaths as he is asked
for in the face of humanity, saved France from being torn in pieces at
the Congress of Vienna; and they who should have given him laurels
fling mud at him.
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