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.]
Immobility.—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,[1] is a most useful
maxim in business. [Same date.]
Dissimulation.—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
- ↑ An open face with a close (or secret) mind.
