Page:Letters, sentences and maxims.djvu/219

 will provoke or please you by design, to catch unguarded words or looks, by which he will easily decipher the secrets of your heart, of which you should keep the key yourself, and trust it with no man living. [Same date.]

—Determine, too, to keep your countenance as unmoved and unembarrassed as possible which steadiness you may get a habit of, by constant attention. I should desire nothing better, in any negotiation, than to have to do with one of these men of warm, quick passions; which I would take care to set in motion. By artful provocations, I would extort rash and unguarded expressions; and, by hinting at all the several things that I could suspect, infallibly discover the true one, by the alteration it occasioned in the countenance of the person. Vólto sciolto con pensieri strétti, is a most useful maxim in business. [Same date.]

—It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnáre: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all. It is simulation that is false, mean and criminal; that is the cunning which