And how is it gained? By honorable character
and life, combined with a certain aggregate of services rendered and of
successes obtained. It is not exactly a good conscience, but it is
something like it, for it is the witness from without, if not the
witness from within. _Consideration_ is not reputation, still less
celebrity, fame, or glory; it has nothing to do with _savoir faire_, and
is not always the attendant of talent or genius. It is the reward given
to constancy in duty, to probity of conduct. It is the homage rendered
to a life held to be irreproachable. It is a little more than esteem,
and a little less than admiration. To enjoy public consideration is at
once a happiness and a power. The loss of it is a misfortune and a
source of daily suffering. Here am I, at the age of fifty-three, without
ever having given this idea the smallest place in my life. It is
curious, but the desire for consideration has been to me so little of a
motive that I have not even been conscious of such an idea at all. The
fact shows, I suppose, that for me the audience, the gallery, the
public, has never had more than a negative importance. I have neither
asked nor expected anything from it, not even justice; and to be a
dependent upon it, to solicit its suffrages and its good graces, has
always seemed to me an act of homage and flunkeyism against which my
pride has instinctively rebelled.
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