When
a friend of Marshal Lefevre was complimenting him on his
possessions and good fortune, the Marshal said: "You envy me, do
you? Well, you shall have these things at a better bargain than I
had. Come into the court: I'll fire at you with a gun twenty
times at thirty paces, and if I don't kill you, all shall be your
own. What! you won't! Very well; recollect, then, that I have
been shot at more than a thousand times, and much nearer, before I
arrived at the state in which you now find me!"
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men
have had to serve. It is usually the best stimulus and discipline
of character. It often evokes powers of action that, but for it,
would have remained dormant. As comets are sometimes revealed by
eclipses, so heroes are brought to light by sudden calamity. It
seems as if, in certain cases, genius, like iron struck by the
flint, needed the sharp and sudden blow of adversity to bring out
the divine spark. There are natures which blossom and ripen
amidst trials, which would only wither and decay in an atmosphere
of ease and comfort.
Thus it is good for men to be roused into action and stiffened
into self-reliance by difficulty, rather than to slumber away
their lives in useless apathy and indolence. (3) It is the
struggle that is the condition of victory. If there were no
difficulties, there would be no need of efforts; if there were no
temptations, there would be no training in self-control, and but
little merit in virtue; if there were no trial and suffering,
there would be no education in patience and resignation.
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