In the first place, I should make you observe, that the world, familiarized with guilt, and accustomed to see the most heinous vices now become the vices of the multitude, is no longer shocked at them; denominates light, defamations which turn upon the most criminal and shameful weaknesses: suspicions of infidelity, in the sacred bond of marriage, are no longer a marked discredit or an essential stain, — they are sources of derision and pleasantry: to accuse a courtier of insincerity and double-dealing, is no attack upon his honour; it is only casting a ridicule on the protestations of sincerity with which he amuses us: to spread the suspicion of hypocrisy, in the sincerest piety, is not an insult to God through his saints; it is a language of derision, which custom has rendered common: in a word, excepting those crimes punishable by the public authority, and which are attended with the loss of credit and property, all others seem trivial, and become the ordinary subject of conversation and of the public censure.
But let us not pursue this reflection farther. I wish to allow that your brother's faults are light: the more they are light, the more are you unjust in heightening them: the more he merits indulgence on your part, the more are we to presume in you a malignity of observation, from which nothing can escape; a natural hardness of heart, which can excuse nothing. Were the faults of your brother important you would spare him, you say; you would find him entitled to your indulgence; politeness and religion would make your silence a duty. What! because his weaknesses are only trivial, you find him less worthy of your regard? The very circumstance which ought to make him respectable, authorizes you in making him the butt of your sarcasms? Are you not, says the apostle, become a judge of iniquitous thoughts? And your eye, is it then wicked, only because your brother is good? Besides, the faults which you censure are light; but would they appear so to you, were you to be reproached with them? When certain discourses, held in your absence, have reached your ears, and which, in fact, attacked essentially neither your honour nor probity, but only acquainted the public with some of your weaknesses, what have been your sensations? My God! Then it was that you magnified every thing; that every circumstance appeared important to you; that, not satisfied with exaggerating the malice of the words, you raked up the secret of the intention, and hoped to find motives still more odious than the discourses. In vain you are told, that these are not reproaches which essentially interest you, and, at the worst, cannot disgrace you: you think yourselves insulted; you mention them with bitter complaints; you blaze out, and are no longer masters of your resentment; and whilst all the world blames the excess of your sensibility, you alone obstinately persist in the belief of its being a serious affair, and that your honour is interested in it. Make use, then, of this rule in the faults which you publish of your brother: apply the offence to yourselves: every thing is light which is against him; but with regard to what touches you, the smallest circumstance appears important to your pride, and worthy of all your resentment.
