officers and soldiers had no more loyalty and no more knowledge of military art than those of the king[1] had, he would at once, with a rope about his neck, go to him to ask mercy (and it seems that he believed something of this: for two or three times later in his life it chanced that he repeated these same words); and he challenged the king to fight with him in their shirts, with sword and dagger, on board a boat.) The said Seigneur de Langey, continuing his story, adds that the said ambassadors, in preparing a despatch to the king concerning these matters, concealed the greater part of them from him, and even said nothing of the two foregoing passages. Now, I find it very strange that it should be in the power of an ambassador to decide concerning the warnings he should give to his master, even when they were of such consequence, coming from such a personage, and uttered in so large an assembly. And it would have seemed to me the duty of the servant to represent things faithfully, in their entirety, just as they happened, so that the master should be free to command, to judge, and to choose; for to twist or conceal the truth, for fear lest he take it otherwise than he ought and lest it drive him to some ill-advised course of action, and meanwhile to leave him in ignorance of his affairs — that would have seemed to me to belong to him who makes the law, not to him who receives it; to the administrator and master of discipline, not to him who ought to deem himself inferior, not in authority only, but in wisdom and good counsel. However this may be, I should not desire to be served in that fashion in my small concerns. (c) We are so ready to withdraw ourselves from another’s command on any pretext, and to encroach upon mastership; every one aspires so naturally to liberty and authority, that no benefit ought to be so dear to the superior, coming from those who serve him, as should be their simple and sincere obedience.
The function of command is perverted when one obeys from choice, not from subordination.[2] And P. Crassus, whom the Romans deemed five times happy,[3] when he was
