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Updated: June 13, 2025
They say there have been instances of two kindred souls, on getting to know one another, becoming at once inseparably united; I have heard it said, too, that things did not always go smoothly with them in consequence ... but of what I have not seen myself I will not speak, and that the pettiest calculation, the most pitiful prudence, can exist in a youthful heart, side by side with the most passionate enthusiasm of that I have to my sorrow had practical experience.
"O! more or less than man in high or low, Battling with nations, flying from the field; Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield; An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild, But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor, However deeply in, men's spirits skilled, Look through thine own nor curb the lust of war, Nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftiest star."
"But he only brought six secretaries and two hundred horsemen with him, and as before was simply clad in a suit of grey cloth," remarks a Venetian writer: "the pettiest German baron would have come with more pomp!"
An English monarch is now as much the creature of an Act of Parliament as the pettiest tax-gatherer in his realm. Green's Short History, p. 673. The first written constitution that created a government.
If they have taken up arms against the Republic they are cut off from humanity; a Pandour taken prisoner is treated as a man; an emigre made prisoner is treated like a wolf they shoot him on the spot. In some cases, even the pettiest legal formalities are dispensed with. "When I am lucky enough to catch 'em," writes Gen. Vandamme, "I do not trouble the military commission to try them.
Then the Duke of Florence has a niece, who is stated to be tolerably handsome, but she comes of one of the pettiest principalities of Christendom; and not more than sixty or eighty years ago her ancestors were merely the chief citizens of the town of which their successors are now the sovereigns; and, moreover, she is a daughter of the same race as Catherine de Medicis, who has been alike my own enemy and that of France."
And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to contend against.
On the one hand traditions of the majesty of the Cæsars, perpetuated by the temporary ascendency of the House of Charlemagne, were surrounding Sovereigns with a prestige which a mere barbarous chieftain could never otherwise have acquired and were communicating to the pettiest feudal potentate the character of guardian of society and representative of the State.
"I do not, however, tell you my reasons for the sake of argument, but in vindication of my seeming want of courtesy towards yourself. I have had a very hard and a very difficult task to perform in bringing the rental of my estate up to its proper value. In doing so, I have been compelled to adopt one uniform system, equally applied to my largest and my pettiest holdings.
This man was instinct with the basest passions, the pettiest desires: he gratified them, and Fate smiled upon his daring.
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