No secrets but between two.
"Where could you have heard that?" said a friend to Grattan. "Why, it is a profound secret." "I heard it," said Grattan, "where secrets are kept—in the street." Napoleon I. used to say, "Secrets travel fast in Paris."[677]
Three may keep counsel if two be away.
We are told in several languages "That the secret of two is God's secret—the secret of three is all the world's;"[678] and the Spaniards hold that "What three know every creature knows."[679] The surest plan is, of course, not to trust to anybody; and this was the plan pursued by Alva and by Q. Metellus Macedonicus, whose maxim, "If my tunic knew my secret I would burn it forthwith," has been turned by the French into a rhyming proverb of their own: "Let the shirt next your skin not know what's within."[680] The Chinese say, "What is whispered in the ear is often heard a hundred miles off." Truly "Nothing is so burdensome as a secret" (French).[681] The Livonians have this humorous hyperbole, "Confide a secret to a dumb man and it will make him speak." King Midas's barber scraped a hole in the earth, and, lying down, poured into it the tremendous secret that oppressed him; but the earth did not keep it close, for it sprouted up with the growing corn, which proclaimed with articulate rustlings, "King Midas hath the ears of an ass."
Or, "The secret of Polichinelle" (French);[682] that is to say, one which is known to everybody. This is what the Spaniards call "The secret of Anchuelos."[683] The town of that name lies in a gorge between two steep hills, on one of which a shepherd tended his flock, on the other a shepherdess. This pair kept up an amorous converse by bawling from hill to hill, but always with many mutual injunctions of secrecy.
"And a man's child cannot be hid," adds Lancelot Gobbo. The English proverb is used jocosely, though derived from an awful sense of the fatality, as it were, with which bloody secrets are almost always brought to light. It seems to us as though the order of nature were inverted when the perpetrator of a murder escapes detection. This faith in Nemesis was expressed in the ancient Greek proverb, "The cranes of Ibycus," of which this is the story. The lyric poet Ibycus was murdered by robbers on his way to Corinth, and with his last breath committed the task of avenging him to a flock of cranes, the only living things in sight besides himself and his murderers. The latter, some time after, sitting in the theatre at Corinth, saw a flock of cranes overhead, and one of them said scoffingly, "Lo, there the avengers of Ibycus!" These words were caught up by some near them, for already the poet's disappearance had excited alarm. The men being questioned betrayed themselves, and were led to their doom, and "The cranes of Ibycus" passed into a proverb. This story may serve to show how
Daylight will peep through a small hole.
"Eggs are close things," say the Chinese, "but the chicks come out at last." "A secret fire is discovered by the smoke" (Catalan).[684]
To let the cat out of the bag.
To betray a secret inadvertently. I cannot tell what is the origin of this phrase. Can it be that it alludes to the practice of selling cats for hares? A fraudulent vendor, while pressing a customer "to buy a cat in a bag," (see p. 61,) might in an unguarded moment let him see enough to detect the imposition.
When rogues fall out honest men come by their own.
They peach upon each other. "Thieves quarrel, and thefts are discovered" (Spanish).[685] "Gossips fall out, and tell each other truths" (Spanish).[686] "When the cook and the butler fall out we shall know what is become of the butter" (Dutch).
Tell your secret to your servant, and you make him your master.
Juvenal notes the policy of the Greek adventurers in Rome to worm out the secrets of the house, and so make themselves feared. "To whom you tell your secret you surrender your freedom" (Spanish).[687] "Tell your friend your secret, and he will set his foot on your throat" (Spanish).[688]
"Hills see, walls hear" (Spanish).[689] "The forest has ears, the field has eyes" (German).[690]
What soberness conceals drunkenness reveals.
"What is in the heart of the sober man is on the tongue of the drunken man" (Latin).[691] "In wine is truth" (Latin).[692] "Wine wears no breeches" (Spanish).[693]
When wine sinks, words swim.[694] When the wine is in the wit is out.
[677] Les confidences vont vite À Paris.
