Do not be ashamed of your birth, then: you are a gentleman throughout the world and will be honoured. As for him, strip him of his fine clothes and deprive him of his wealth, and he is a mere mushroom—as Polynices discovered in exile, when his gentility counted for nothing—like a foreign coin that no one will accept; he will be despised.

Once again, though you are a barbarian born at Tontonteac, a serf, a slave, a Black African from Saldania, or an uncultivated Virginian at Dasamonquepeuc, and he a French monsieur, a Spanish don, or an Italian signor—I do not care what his ancestry, family, or rank may be, baron, count, or prince—if you have good qualities and he has none, but is a degenerate Neoptolemus, I tell you in a word: you are a man, and he is a beast.

Let no son of the soil or upstart crow over what I have said, and no worthy gentleman take offence. I do not say it to disparage those who deserve well and are truly virtuous and noble. I greatly respect and honour true gentry and nobility. I myself was born to parents of good standing, in an old family, but I am a younger brother: it does not concern me.

Even had I been some great heir, richly endowed, with my present outlook I should not have been puffed up at all. I should have valued it like every other human happiness, honours, and so on: they come to an end; they are fragile and unstable.

As the writer said of that great river, the Danube: it rises from a small spring, at first a little brook, sometimes broad, sometimes narrow, now slow, then swift; at last, swollen to an incredible size by the meeting of sixty navigable rivers, it vanishes, loses its name, and is suddenly swallowed by the Black Sea. I may say the same of our greatest families. Humble at first, enlarged by rich marriages, purchases, and offices, they last for a few ages, with small changes in circumstances, fortunes, places, and so on. Then, through some prodigal son, some failure, or the lack of an heir, they are effaced in an instant and their memory blotted out.

Meanwhile I grant this much to good birth: if a man descends from parents of honourable or noble standing, he will show it in his character.

For fierce eagles Do not breed doves.

Although the nobility of our times much resemble our coins—greater in number and nominal value, but less in weight and quality, with finer stamps, engravings, or surfaces than of old—if a man retains those ancient marks of true gentility, he will be more affable, courteous, and kindly, better behaved and tempered, or of a more magnanimous, heroic, and generous spirit than the common mass of men, those ordinary boors and peasants, “who are generally so wicked, rustic, and uncultivated, not to say malicious, that they would show no one any kindness, not even God himself if he came,” as one writer observes of them: a rude, brutish, uncivil, wild, snarling breed, cruel and malicious, incapable of instruction, and scarcely possessed of common sense.

And what the physician Lemnius said of his travels in England may be said generally of everyone: the common people were foolish, sullen, surly clowns, “but the gentry were gentler, most ready for every act of kindness”; the gentlemen were courteous and civil.

If such peasants happen to be advanced, as they often are, through their wealth, chance, mistake, or otherwise, still, like the cat in the fable who played with mice after being changed into a beautiful maiden, a cur will be a cur and a clown will be a clown. He will probably betray the stock he came from, and that inborn rusticity can scarcely be shaken off.

Though he struts proudly in his wealth, Fortune does not change his birth.

Although education may make such men more capable and refined, there are many signs by which they can probably be detected: an affected, fanciful manner, a tailor’s fussy smartness, a peculiar style in everything they do; more particular than others about their food. As Jerome aptly describes such a man to Nepotian: an upstart born in a lowly cottage, who at first scarcely had coarse bread to fill his hungry guts, must now feed on fancy delicacies and elaborate dishes, and have every variety of meat and fish, the finest oysters, and so on.

A beggar’s brat will commonly be more scornful, domineering, arrogant, and insolent than another man of his rank. Nothing is so intolerable as a prosperous fool, as Cicero discovered long ago from experience.

Nothing is harsher than a lowly man when he rises high,

Set a beggar on horseback, and he will go galloping, galloping, and so on.

He rages against everyone While he thinks he has the power; no beast is fiercer Than a slave’s fury raging against freeborn necks.

He forgets what he was, bullies others, and so on; and he has many other such signs by which you may distinguish him from a true gentleman. There are many errors and faults on both sides, noble and lowborn, among those made noble and those born so. Yet in every calling, as some degenerate, others deserve well and are most worthy of their honours.

As Busbequius said of Suleiman the Magnificent, he was “worthy of so great an empire”: worthy of that great empire. Many people of humble descent are most worthy of their honours, noble in public standing, and fully deserve them. Many of our hereditary nobles deserve to be princes, as someone said of Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Antigonus, and the rest of Alexander’s followers: they were all worthy to be monarchs and generals of armies.

And I agree with Sesellius this far: if they are capable, they ought to be preferred to others, as people nobly born, liberally brought up, and trained from infancy in every form of civil conduct. For learning and virtue stand out more in a nobleman and, like a jewel set in gold, are more precious and worthy of regard. Such a man deserves more than others and does his family as much honour as his noble family does him.

In a word, many noblemen adorn their order; many poor men’s sons are exceptionally gifted, outstanding, and deserving through their merit, wisdom, learning, virtue, courage, and integrity: excellent members and pillars of a commonwealth. And therefore, to conclude what I first set out to show, being of low birth, humbly born, is no such disgrace. And thus what was to be demonstrated has been demonstrated.