In these conquests it is not enough to let the defeated nation keep its laws ; it is perhaps more necessary to let it keep its customs, because a people always knows, loves, and defends its customs more than its laws.

The French have been driven out of Italy nine times, because, say the historians, [1] of their insolence with respect to the women and girls. It is too much for a nation to have to bear the pride of the conqueror, and also his incontinence, and yet again his perhaps more objectionable indiscretion, because it multiplies insults no end.