At present you have no enemies; but the moment you attempt distinction, you will be abused; calumniated, reviled.
You will be shocked at the wrath you excite, and sigh for your old obscurity, and consider, as Franklin has it, that 'you have paid too dear for your whistle.' But in return for individual enemies, what a noble recompense to have made the Public itself your friend; perhaps even Posterity your familiar! Besides," added De Montaigne, with almost a religious solemnity in his voice, "there is a conscience of the head as well as of the heart, and in old age we feel as much remorse if we have wasted our natural talents as if we had perverted our natural virtues.

The profound and exultant satisfaction with which a man who knows that he has not lived in vain--that he has entailed on the world an heirloom of instruction or delight--looks back upon departed struggles, is one of the happiest emotions of which the conscience can be capable.

What, indeed, are the petty faults we commit as individuals, affecting but a narrow circle, ceasing with our own lives, to the incalculable and everlasting good we may produce as public men by one book or by one law?
Depend upon it that the Almighty, who sums up all the good and all the evil done by His creatures in a just balance, will not judge the august benefactors of the world with the same severity as those drones of society, who have no great services to show in the eternal ledger, as a set-off to the indulgence of their small vices.
These things rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every inducement that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken from the voluptuous indolence of the literary Sybarite, and contend worthily in the world's wide Altis for a great prize." Maltravers never before felt so flattered--so stirred into high resolves.

The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of this man, usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the sound of a trumpet.
He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, his cheek flushed.

"De Montaigne," said he, "your words have cleared away a thousand doubts and scruples--they have gone right to my heart.