The Various and Ingenious Machines

TO THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING.

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Truly glorious and Royal was that answer of the very famous Athenian Themistocles; who, being asked which unique prize, or which proud voice, he would most prefer to hear in the theater to praise his excellent life, let escape from his wise mouth that the voice which was equal to his merits and his virtues pleased him above all others. Thereby he intimated to the world silently that, just as false praises unjustly attributed to unworthy men denigrate their lives without end, so the merited glory explained by illustrious spirits among the people increases the clearest splendor to invincible and Heroic souls, such as that of Your Most Christian Majesty. I persuade myself, therefore, that you will accept my admiration and bowing to the generosity of your Royal soul, the clearest prudence, the affable kindness, and the intrepidity of your divine valor, which flourishing gifts, to claim the palm of so many sublime virtues and honored decorations divinely gathered in you, contend for having particularly the greatest dominion in your most high spirit. Hence it happens that, following I the praised style of illustrious writers who use to dedicate the lofty parts and the glorious fruits of their most noble talents to the supreme Monarchs of the earth, as to true Divinities and their singular Gods in this present life, and having I regard to this divine conformity, whose celestial favor has conformed Your Most Christian Majesty to the eternal God in dominating and giving law to the most powerful and magnanimous great Kingdom of France, I will not dare (to avoid the reputation of Timagoras before Darius, or of Aristippus before Dionysius) to enter into the spacious fields of your Royal pomps and triumphant glories: so much more that their height takes away not only from the lowness of my intellect, but even from the most elevated spirits the power to attain the shadow of those unheard-of merits, which at all hours with great wonder of the world shine in your Royal person. I will limit myself therefore to saying only that (a long time ago) being called and solicited insistently in Italy, in the name of your Majesty, to transfer myself with an honored salary to the service of this