Page:Marquis de Sade - Adelaide of Brunswick.djvu/64

 then I am more important and most useful on the earth than a prince."

"Sir," answered Frederick, "I am far from being of your opinion. You work only for yourself. Your worries are only for your fortune. The prince thinks only of the good of his subjects; there is no selfishness in him, while you are inspired only by it … The image of a good prince is something like that of a god, while you only offer that of sordid cupidity."

"And in what class are there not dishonest people? It is the state that we judge and not the one who rules it. I pretend, Sir, that the country is more important than the scepter and that since trade makes men live, it will always be more important than anything else."

"But are you not forgetting the rights of birth?"

"What are they except the effect of luck? Let us suppose that you are a noble. Did you have anything to do with your being one? Your merits can make your position important, Sir, but your ancestors had nothing to do with it."

"Do you believe that these merits depend on us alone?"

"No more than nobility. Our penchants come from nature, I know, but we are the masters of the direction of our efforts. Man is what he is through habit; let him try to adopt good principles from childhood, and the habit of these good principles will take him straight to a state of virtue. One cannot exaggerate the importance of the first impressions one gives to youth and how much they influence the rest of his life. But these cares, these efforts are impossible for the child. He fails if his teacher does not aid him. What care parents should take in the selection of a teacher!"

"I don't see the necessity of it," said a third person in approaching the two conversationalists, "I would a hundred times rather abandon nature to itself than to burden it with a lot of useless advice which is always forgotten as soon as passion gets the upper hand. It is man's nature to resist the brakes which one puts on him, and in that way all the effects of good teaching are lost. Let experience be the only teacher."

"Will it be in time after the mistakes have been made?" asked Frederick.

"Isn't it always necessary for a person to make at least one