But, above all, old men who retain the memory of things past, and forget how often they have told them, are dangerous company; and I have known stories from the mouth of a man of very great quality, otherwise very pleasant in themselves, become very wearisome by being repeated a hundred times over and over again to the same people.
Secondly, that, by this means, I the less remember the injuries I have received; insomuch that, as the ancient said,--[Cicero, Pro Ligar.
c.

12.]--I should have a register of injuries, or a prompter, as Darius, who, that he might not forget the offence he had received from those of Athens, so oft as he sat down to dinner, ordered one of his pages three times to repeat in his ear, "Sir, remember the Athenians";--[Herod., v.
105.]--and then, again, the places which I revisit, and the books I read over again, still smile upon me with a fresh novelty.
It is not without good reason said "that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying." I know very well that the grammarians--[Nigidius, Aulus Gellius, xi.

ii; Nonius, v.

80.]-- distinguish betwixt an untruth and a lie, and say that to tell an untruth is to tell a thing that is false, but that we ourselves believe to be true; and that the definition of the word to lie in Latin, from which our French is taken, is to tell a thing which we know in our conscience to be untrue; and it is of this last sort of liars only that I now speak.

Now, these do either wholly contrive and invent the untruths they utter, or so alter and disguise a true story that it ends in a lie.