Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France Part 2

[Footnote 6: It is possible that the conversation of Mme de Sable concentrated his thoughts on self-love. A contemporary MS. says of that lady, "Elle flatte fort l'amour propre quand elle parle aux gens." But egotism was a new discovery which fascinated everybody in the third quarter of the century.]

Let us turn to the few, but profoundly beautiful reflections which form the constructive element in La Rochefoucauld's teaching. His aim in edification is to train us to dig through the crust of social sham to the limpid truth which exists in the dark centre of our souls--

"If there is a pure love, he says, exempt from all admixture with other pa.s.sions, it is that which lies hidden at the bottom of the heart, and of which we ourselves are ignorant."

Unlike Mandeville, our own great cynic of the eighteenth century, La Rochefoucauld, while calling in question the reality of almost all benevolent impulses, stopped short of denying the existence of virtue itself. He would not have said, as the author of the "Fable of the Bees" (1714) did, that the "hunting after this _pulchrum et honestum_ is not much better than a wild-goose chase." But he had a strong contempt for the humbugs of the world, and among them he placed unflinching optimists. One of the main forms of humbug in his day was the legend that everybody acted n.o.bly for the sake of other people.

This La Rochefoucauld stoutly denied, but he was not so excessive as his commentators in his condemnation of that self-love which he declares to be the source of all our moral actions. He insinuates the possibility of an innocent and even a beneficial egotism. He says, "The praise which is given us serves to fix us in the practice of virtue," and if that is true, _amour-propre_ must be practically useful. Helvetius, who made some very valuable comments on the "Maximes" a hundred years later, pointed out that _amour-propre_ is not in itself an evil thing, but is a sentiment implanted in us all by nature, and that this sentiment is transformed in every human being into either vice or virtue, so that although we are all egoists, some are good and some are bad.

La Rochefoucauld, therefore, while he takes a very dark view of the selfishness of the human race, softens the shades of his picture by admitting that egotism may be, and often must be, advantageous not merely to the individual but to the race. And here we find the key to one of the oddest pa.s.sages in his works, that in which he attributes his inspiration to two saints, St. Augustine and St. Epicurus! He says--

Everybody wishes to be happy; that is the aim of all the acts of life. Spurious men of the world and spurious men of piety only seek for the appearance of virtue, and I believe that in matters of morality, Seneca was a hypocrite and Epicurus was a saint. I know of nothing in the world so beautiful as n.o.bility of heart and loftiness of mind: from these proceeds that perfect integrity which I set above all other qualities, and which seems to me, at my present stage of life, to be of more price than a royal crown. But I am not sure whether, in order to live happily and as a man of the highest sense of honour, it is not better to be Alcibiades and Phaedo than to be Aristides and Socrates.

It would take us too far out of our path to comment on the relation of this epicureanism to the religion of La Rochefoucauld's day, but a few words seem necessary on this subject. He says extremely little about religion, although he makes the necessary and perhaps not wholly perfunctory, statement that he was orthodox. But the position of a votary of St. Epicurus had grown difficult. Since the Duke's exile, the enmity between the church and the world had become violent, so violent that a man of prominent social and intellectual position was bound to take one side or another. We may note that the years during which the "Maximes" were being composed were precisely those during which Bossuet was thundering from the pulpit his anathemas against worldly luxury and the pride of life. The period marked at one extremity by "L'Amour des Pa.s.sions" (1660) and at the other by the "Grandeurs Humains" (1663) is precisely that in which the lapidary art of La Rochefoucauld was most a.s.siduous. The church was advocating asceticism and humility with all its authority, and was leading up towards the later phase of the fanatical despotism of Louis XIV.'s old age, with all its attendant hypocrisy. For the moment, in the struggle, La Rochefoucauld, though no _devot_, would seem a friend of the church rather than a foe, and in fact he retained the intimacy of Bossuet, in whose arms he died. We may be sure that he guarded himself with delicate care from the charge of being what was then called a "libertine," that is a man openly at war with the theory and practice of the theologians.

It is said that La Rochefoucauld invented[7] the word "vraie," "true,"

to describe the character of Mme de La Fayette. His intimacy with this ill.u.s.trious lady is one of the most beautiful episodes in the history of literature, and perhaps its purest example of true friends.h.i.+p between the s.e.xes. The phrase we have already quoted shows that in 1663 the two great writers were acquainted but not yet intimate. Marie de la Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette, was in her thirtieth year, La Rochefoucauld had completed his fiftieth when some cause which remains obscure drew them together with a tie which death alone, after seventeen wonderful years of almost unbroken a.s.sociation, was to sever. There was no scandal about it, even in that scandal-mongering age. The astute Mile de Scudery, writing to her gossip Bussy Rabutin (December 6, 1675), says, "Nothing could be happier for her, or more dignified for him; the fear of G.o.d on either side, and perhaps prudence as well, have clipped the wings of love." Twelve years before, when Menage had repeated to her some critical remarks about her novel, "La Princesse de Montpensier," Mme de La Fayette had replied, "I am greatly obliged to M. de la Rochefoucauld for his expressions. They are the result of our similarity of experience, 'de la belle sympathie qui est entre nous.'"

[Footnote 7: Mme de Sevigne seems not to have known this when, in writing to her daughter (July 19, 1671), she claims to have been the first to say _vraie_ when she meant sincere, loyal. "Il y a longtemps que je dis que vous etes _vraie_"]

The famous friends were excluded by their physical conditions from the activities of life. Mme de La Fayette, who was perhaps something of a hypochondriac, tossed all day among the pillows of that golden bed with the extravagance of which the austerity of Mme de Maintenon upbraided her. La Rochefoucauld, tormented by the gout, lay stretched at her side in his long chair, and the days went by in endless discussion, endless balancing of right and wrong, much gossip, much reading of books new and old, and not a little consultation of artist with artist. They kept their secrets well, and no curiosity of successive critics has been able to discover how much of La Rochefoucauld is hidden in the pages of "La Princesse de Cleves", the earliest of the modern novels of the world, nor how much of Mme de La Fayette in the revised and re-revised text of the "Maximes." [8] But we know that she was no less sagacious and no less an enemy to illusion than he was, and those are probably not far wrong who have detected a softening influence from her conversation on the late genius of La Rochefoucauld.

In 1675 Mme de Thiange presented to the Duke du Maine a toy which has long ago disappeared, and for the recovery of which I would gladly exchange many a grand composition of painting and sculpture. It was a sort of gilded doll's house, representing the interior of a _salon_.

Over the door was written, "Chambre des Sublimes." Inside were wax portrait-figures of living celebrities, the Duke du Maine in one arm-chair; in another La Rochefoucauld, who was handing him some ma.n.u.script. By the arm-chairs were standing Bossuet, then Bishop of Condom, and La Rochefoucauld's eldest son, M. de Marcillac. At the other end of the alcove Mme de La Fayette and Mme de Thiange were reading verses together. Outside the bal.u.s.trade, Boileau with a pitchfork was preventing seven or eight bad poets from entering, to the amus.e.m.e.nt and approval of Racine, who was already inside, and of La Fontaine, who was invited to come forward. The likeness of these little waxen images is said to have been perfect, and there can hardly be fancied a relic of that fine society which would be more valuable to us in re-establis.h.i.+ng its social character. We know not what became of it in the next generation. No doubt, the wax grew dusty, and the figures lost their heads and hands, and some petulant chatelaine doomed the ruined treasure to the dustbin.

[Footnote 8: Bussy Rabutin writes to Mme de Sevigne that he hears that La Rochefoucauld and Mme de La Fayette are preparing "quelque chose de fort joli." This shows that before "La Princess de Cleves" was finished the Duke's name was identified with its composition.]

No mention of Mme de Sevigne is made in the inventory of the "Chambre des Sublimes," and yet there is no one to whom we owe an exacter portraiture of its inmates, nor one who was more worthy to animate its golden recesses. For the last ten years of La Rochefoucauld's life she was one of the closest observers of the famous sedentary friends.h.i.+p.

Unfortunately she tells us nothing about the original publication of the "Maximes," for his name does not occur in her correspondence before 1668, and does not abound there until 1670. Then we find her for ever at the Duke's house, or meeting him at Mme de La Fayette's bedside. He gratified her by warm and constant praise of Mme de Grignan, whose letters were regularly read to the friends by her infatuated mother. It is vexing that Mme de Sevigne, who might have spared us two or three of her immortal pages, although she incessantly mentions and even quotes La Rochefoucauld, generally refrains from describing him. She and Mme de La Fayette were his guests in the country on May 15, and the three wonderful companions walked in the harmony of "nightingales, hawthorns, lilacs, fountains and fine weather," or played with his pet white mouse. Such touches are rare, and Paris seems best to suit what Mme de Sevigne admirably calls "the grey-brown" thought of La Rochefoucauld.

In 1671 he had a terrible attack of the gout, accompanied by agonies moral and physical which filled the ladies with alarm and pity. Better in 1672, he was able to entertain company to hear Corneille read his new tragedy of "Pulcherie" in January, and Moliere his new comedy, "Les Femmes Savantes," in March. He was now, in premature old age, the venerable figure in the group, the benevolent Nestor of the salons.

Let his detractors remember that Mme de Sevigne, who knew what she was talking about, wrote that "he is the most lovable man I have ever known," His sufferings, his disenchantments and disappointments, only seemed to accentuate his beautiful patience. Just before his fatal illness (January 31, 1680) Mme de Sevigne writes again: "I have never seen a man so obliging, nor more amiable in his wish to give pleasure by what he says." [9] Her detailed and pathetic account of his last hours, which closed on the night of March 16, 1680, testifies to her deep attachment and to Mme de La Fayette's despair.

[Footnote 9: Two of La Fontaine's fables, "L'Homme et son Image" and "Les Lapins," were dedicated to La Rochefoucauld in 1668. In the former we read:--

_On voit bien ou je veux venir.

Je parle a tous, et cette erreur extreme Est un mal que chacun se plait d'entretenir Notre ame, c'est cet homme amoureux de lui-meme; Tant de miroirs, ce sont les sottises d'autrui, Miroirs, de nos defauts les peintres legitimes; Et quant au ca.n.a.l, c'est celui, Que chacun sait: le livre des Maximes._]

When Mme de Sevigne, in 1675, received the third edition of the Duke's book, which contained more than seventy new maxims, she wrote, "Some of them are divine; some of them, I am ashamed to say, I don't understand."

Probably she would have partly agreed with some one's criticism of them, "De l'esprit, encore de l'esprit, et toujours de l'esprit--trop d'esprit!" [10] No doubt, La Rochefoucauld has done his own reputation wrong by the bl.u.s.ter of his scepticism and also by the fact that he sometimes wraps his thoughts up in such a blaze of epigram that we are disconcerted to find, when we a.n.a.lyze them, that they are commonplaces.

Contemporaries seemed to have smiled at the excessive subtlety into which their long conversations led Mme de La Fayette and her sublime companion. Mme de Sevigne describes such talks with her delicate irony, and says, "We plunged into subtleties which were beyond our intelligence." An example is the dispute whether "Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind," or "Grace is to the body what delicacy is to the mind" should be the ultimate form of a maxim. They sometimes drew the spider's thread so fine that it became invisible.[11]

[Footnote 10: The practice of making "maxims," _axiomata_, encouraged the enlivenment of conversation by the introduction of topsy-turvy statements, such as "Constancy is merely inconstancy arrested," in the manner of Oscar Wilde and Mr. Chesterton.]

[Footnote 11: La Rochefoucauld was not without affectations. He spoke airily about his _maniere negligee_ of writing, whereas no one ever took more pains. Segrais gives very interesting information on this point: he says that the Duke "sent me from time to time what he had been working on, and he wished me to keep these note-books of his for five or six weeks, so as to be able to give them my closest attention, particularly with regard to the turn of the thoughts and the arrangement of the words. Some of his maxims he altered as many as thirty times." But when he wrote to Esprit, in 1660, La Rochefoucauld affected to regard his own writings as trifles thrown off "au coin de mon feu" The great of the earth have these amiable and amusing weaknesses.]

But his clearness of insight was immense, and he was too profoundly intelligent to be a merely destructive or sterile force. He builded better than he knew. For instance, courage, it has been alleged, he denies, and indeed he is so savage in his exposure of braggadocio that it might well be believed that he refused to admit that men could be brave. Yet what does he say?--

"Intrepidity is an extraordinary force of the soul which lifts it above those troubles, disorders and emotions which the aspect of great peril would otherwise excite; it is by this force that heroes maintain themselves in a state of equanimity, preserving the free use of their reason through the most surprising and the most terrible accidents."

This must include the most moving of all accidents, those which call forth moral and physical courage in the face of national danger, and are rewarded by _gloire_, by public and lasting fame. And we are led on to a consideration of the lengthy reflection on the spirit in which the approach of death should be faced, with which he closed the latest edition of the "Maximes," declaring that "the splendour of dying with a firm spirit, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave a fair reputation behind us, the a.s.surance of being released from the drudgery of life and of depending no more on the caprices of fortune,"

are remedies which would medicine our pain in approaching the dreaded goal of our existence.

We must read La Rochefoucauld closely to perceive why a book so searching, and even so cruel as his, has exercised on the genius of France a salutary and a lasting influence. His savage pessimism is not useless, it is not a mere scorn of humanity and a sneer at its weaknesses. It tends, by stripping off all the shams of conduct and digging to the root of action, to make people upright, candid and magnanimous on a new basis of truth. So we come at last to see the significance of Voltaire's dark saying of the "Maximes": "This book is one of those which have contributed most to form the taste of the French nation, and to give it the spirit of accuracy and precision."

LA BRUYeRE

La Bruyere was thirty-five years of age when La Rochefoucauld died, and twenty when the "Maximes" were published. We have no evidence that he ever met the former, but he certainly read the latter, and in spite of his eager denial that Pascal or La Rochefoucauld suggested his method to him--"I have followed neither of these paths," he says--it is impossible to doubt that the example of the "Maximes" had a great deal to do with the form of the "Caracteres." His own disciple, Brillon, tells us of La Bruyere that, "the author of the work which this age has most admired was at least ten years writing it, and about as long hesitating whether he would write it or not." The "Caracteres"

was finished in 1687; Brillon's estimate takes us back to 1667 or earlier, and the brilliant success of the "Maximes" dates from 1665.

Every author imagines that he loses some dignity by being supposed to follow the lead of another author, although the entire history of literature is before him to show that the lamp of genius has always been handed on from hand to hand. La Bruyere, in particular, was not exempt from this amiable weakness, but his ghost needs feel no displeasure if we insist on connecting him with the effort of La Rochefoucauld.

It is very amusing to see how anxious La Bruyere is not to seem to owe anything to La Rochefoucauld. He speaks of his own writings as "less delicate" than those of the Duke, and in his own opening words he declares that he has had no wish to write maxims, "which are laws in morals," as he has no legislative authority. I suppose that in describing the tone of La Rochefoucauld as "delicate" La Bruyere really meant supercilious, and deprecated any idea that he, the typical bourgeois, should seem to lay down the law like the architype of intellectual aristocracy. He scoffs at the Duke for making his reflections "like oracles," so short are they and so concise; and he is quite correct when he boasts of the extreme variety and versatility of his own manner. He accuses La Rochefoucauld of browbeating his readers into subjection to his thought; while, La Bruyere says, "for my part I am quite willing that my reader should say sometimes that I have not observed correctly, provided that he himself will observe better." The reader, on the other hand, must not be taken in by all this, which is very characteristic of La Bruyere's timid self-confidence. His reputation loses nothing by our discovering that he owes much to Montaigne and still more to La Rochefoucauld.

The link is clear, in spite of the foliage with which La Bruyere seeks to conceal it. It could only be from La Rochefoucauld that the author of "Les Caracteres" derived that sad disillusionment, lighted up by flashes of savage wit, with which he expresses his sense of the defects of human character. It may often be noted that when La Bruyere speaks of egotism, of the prevalence of _amour-propre_, his pungent phrases have the very sound of those of his precursor. The truth is that a strong new book is not read by a young man whose genius is prepared for its teaching, without its image being stamped upon his mind. La Bruyere's own experience had already offered to him a banquet of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when he met with the "Maximes" of 1665. His conscience and his memory were prepared, and the truth is that a great deal of La Rochefoucauld's teaching pa.s.sed into his veins without his knowing it. This does not in the least undermine the reputation which justly belongs to La Bruyere as one of the most original writers of France, or even of Europe, but it links him for our intelligence with the other great moralist of his century.

The author of the "Maximes" was the head of one of the great princely houses of France. The author of the "Caracteres" was the type of the plebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the quintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyere is not less a specimen of the middle cla.s.s. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his own joke about his ancestry. He wrote, "I warn everybody whom it may concern, in order that the world may be prepared and n.o.body be surprised, that if ever it should happen that one of the mighty of the earth should deem me worthy of his care, in other words if I should ever come into an immense fortune, there is a G.o.defroi de La Bruyere whom all the chroniclers place in the list of the greatest n.o.bles of France who followed G.o.defroi de Bouillon to the conquest of the Holy Land. When that happens, I shall descend from him in the direct line."

One would think that a child could perceive this to be a satire at the profiteers of the age, who invented ancestors, and so a child would to-day, but in the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century it was not safe to be funny. In particular, nonsense--the divine charm of which we now admit--had not been acclimatized, and was looked upon with grave displeasure. It wrings the heart that when Goldsmith, in a purple coat, pretended to think himself more attractive than the Jessamy Bride, his contemporaries severely censured this as an instance of his "vanity."

So the fools and fops of La Bruyere's time thought or pretended to think that he was seriously claiming to be of n.o.ble birth. Nothing was further from his intention; no La Bruyere had taken part in the Crusades, any more than any member of Charles Lamb's family had been Pope of Rome. The moralist's father, Louis de La Bruyere, was Comptroller-General of Rents of the Hotel de Ville of Paris; his mother was an attorney's daughter. The eldest of five, he was born on August 17, 1645, in the centre of old Paris, close to the church of St.

Christopher. It is only of late years that this fact has been discovered, and there are still immense blanks in the life of La Bruyere during which he disappears from us altogether, engulfed in the lanes of the Cite, not because of any adventurous mystery, but simply because of his total lack of adventure. There has scarcely lived a great man of letters in comparatively recent times about whose life there is so little to relate as about that of La Bruyere. He is believed to have gone to school to the Fathers of the Oratory, but even that is not certain. His knowledge of Greek is thought to prove it, but, though the Oratorians were admirable h.e.l.lenists, surely Greek could be learned elsewhere.

When he was twenty, he pa.s.sed his examination in law in Orleans, and, coming back to Paris, practised as a lawyer for eight or nine years.

He was concerned in no famous case, it is supposed, since his name is never mentioned in the gossip of the time. He inherited a competence from his father, and probably lived an idle life, diversified by a little legal business of a very mediocre nature. As his biographer says, he grew more and more "inclined by his temperament to a meditative existence." When he was in his thirtieth year, a crisis came. By some means or other, he secured a lucrative sinecure, that of treasurer of finances at Caen in Normandy. He hated the country and went down to Caen on the rarest occasions possible. La Bruyere, a Parisian to the marrow of his bones, says, "Provincials and fools are always ready to lose their temper and believe that one is laughing at them or despising them. You must never venture on a joke, even the mildest, except with well-bred, witty people." Perhaps he had been trying G.o.defroi de La Bruyere off on the stolid inhabitants of Caen.

He received a salary, however, which was far from being all paid away to a subst.i.tute, and he rose, in the curious social scale of those days, from Mister (_roturier_) into Esquire (_ecuyer_). The court in Normandy was extremely angry with him at periodical intervals, but apparently could do nothing to a.s.sert itself. When it raged, La Bruyere was like the East in Matthew Arnold's poem, he "bow'd low before the blast in patient, deep disdain."

He lived through these quiet years in one apartment after another in the heart of Paris. Vigneul de Marville saw him "nearer heaven than earth" in a room which a light curtain divided into two. "The wind, always at the service of philosophers, running ahead of visitors, would lift this curtain adroitly, and reveal the philosopher, smiling with pleasure at the opportunity of distilling the elixir of his meditations into the brain and the heart of a listener." He was always at work, but his work was confined to meditation, talk and study.

Sometimes he left his garret, and studied "the court and the town"

from the benches of the public gardens, the Luxembourg and the Tuileries. There has been an enormous amount of speculation and conjecture about the central period of the life of La Bruyere, but we really have only one positive doc.u.ment to go upon. During the illness of his own footman, he borrowed the services of his brother's man, who robbed him of money and clothes. La Bruyere put the case in the hands of the police, who failed to catch the thief. This is the only definite fact which has rewarded the patience of the investigators, and we must build round it what we can. We build round it his own glimpse of self-portraiture (in "Des Biens de Fortune") and find the philosopher bending over the volume where Plato discusses the spirituality of the soul, or measuring, with a rapt expression, the infinite distance between Saturn and Jupiter.[12]

[Footnote 12: "Vigneul de Marville," to whom we owe some picturesque impressions of La Bruyere at this time of social obscurity, was one of the pseudonyms of Bonaventure d'Argonne, whose real name appears to have been Noel Argonne. He was a Carthusian who dabbled in literature, and who towards the close of his career compiled a volume of "Melanges," containing anecdotes which are often spiteful, but sometimes useful to the historian of literature. He seems to have visited La Bruyere in the days of his comparative poverty, when his mother kept home for the whole family, first in the Rue Chapon, and later in the Rue des Grands Augustins.]

When he is on the point of entering his fortieth year, La Bruyere suddenly breaks out of the cloud which encompa.s.ses him, and is revealed as professor of history to the Duke of Bourbon, and resident in the household of the great Prince de Conde. There is no evidence to show how Bossuet, then Bishop of Meaux, and the most influential man of intellect in France, became acquainted with the discreet and obscure treasurer of finances; but it is evident that he was struck by the vast learning and intelligence of this silent, smiling anchorite.

Fontenelle tells us that Bossuet, who had been tutor to the Dauphin, "made a practice of supplying to the princes such persons, meritorious in letters, as they had need of." In 1684, then, we know not why nor how, Bossuet recommended La Bruyere as tutor to the House of Conde. It is a matter of ceaseless wonderment, however, that the philosopher accepted and retained the post. He possessed a sufficient though a modest competence already, and he exchanged a life of complete independence for a most painful and trying servitude, hung up between the insolence of those above and the impertinence of those below him.

The situation of La Bruyere in the Maison de Conde was like that of f.a.n.n.y Burney at the court of George III., only worse. Commentators have expended endless ingenuity in conjecturing what were the reasons which induced him to enslave himself.

A careful study of his great book must add to our amazement. No one ever locked himself up in prison with an exacter appreciation of the discomforts of captivity. La Bruyere has some remarks about freedom, which plunge us in bewilderment. "Liberty," he says, "is not laziness: it is a free use of one's time; it is having the choice of one's own work and exercise. To be free, in a word, is not to do nothing, but to be sole judge of what one shall do or not do. In this sense, what a boon is liberty!" This practical freedom he possessed to the full, when in August 1684 he accepted bondage to a spiteful monkey of a boy, a dwarf with a huge head and a dreadful face, to whom he was to impart, with tears of disappointment and humiliation, the rudiments of national history. He was immediately responsible to the father of this infant phenomenon, to Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose "useless talents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and others," Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of our delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless plaything of this "unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour, without affection, without friends."

But after two centuries of canonization of the Condes, it has now become the fas.h.i.+on to denigrate them to an equal excess. The traditional figure of the Grand Conde, Olympian and sublime, has been exposed by pitiless doc.u.mentary evidence. La Bruyere's latest and most learned editor, M. Emile Magne, gives a terrible picture of the Prince's meanness and dirtiness; Harpagon in an ostler's jacket, he calls him, _en souquenille_. But to dwell on all this is to forget that the great Conde, even in his ugly old age, was haloed by the glory of having been the first soldier of the world. It was a privilege, even at the end, to be admitted to his intimacy, and I believe that we pity La Bruyere more than he pitied himself. It scandalizes the biographers that the Prince, on one occasion, made La Bruyere dance a _pas seul_ before him, tw.a.n.ging a tune on the guitar.

I suppose De Quincey would have been complaisant if the Duke of Wellington had asked him to whistle "Home, Sweet Home" to him. There is a limit, after all, to the modern theory of the Dignity of Letters.

Valincourt says that "All the time La Bruyere lived in the House of Conde, everybody was always making fun of him." Possibly the fear of appearing pedantic among all these people of fas.h.i.+on and these tinselled flunkeys made him lend himself to ridicule. They all teased and mocked him, I suppose, but not, I think, so as seriously to hurt him, and now, with his book in our hands, the laugh is on his side.

For when we examine carefully we see that his position in the House of Conde improved as time went on. He got rid of his rivals, the other tutors; when the Grand Conde died, La Bruyere got rid of his dreadful pupil as well. We find him no longer "precepteur," but "gentilhomme de M. le Duc,"--no longer, that is, a mere scholastic drudge, but a sort of lord-in-waiting. He had probably a large increase of salary, since in 1687 he seems to have resigned his "charge" at Caen. Instead of being pinned to the dark apartment in the recesses of the Cite, he now revolved in ceaseless movement between Chantilly and Fontainebleau, Paris and Versailles. He became a sort of confidential reader to the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, an essential part of the suite. After the first years, he had a great deal of leisure. He could retire to the security of a handsomely furnished apartment--upholstered in green--on the second floor of the Hotel de Conde, opposite the Luxembourg, and he had another set of rooms at Versailles. The bondage became, I expect, no real bondage at all.

But why had he, so long completely his own master, consented to become the servant even of famous Royal princes? I think that as mothers accept irksome situations for the support of their children, so La Bruyere became the serf of the Condes for the sake of his book. For it is now time to reveal the fact that in this apparently listless, empty life there was one absorbing secret interest. This was the collection of the maxims, reflections, pictures, and what not which he had been quietly absorbing and turning into the honey of more and more exquisite prose ever since his early youth. I think that La Bruyere deliberately accepted all that might prove irksome in the captivity to the House of Conde for the sole sake of his book. He needed to see more types, and types of a more brilliant and effective kind than he could become familiar with in his mediocre condition. He knew all that was to be known about the artizans and the shopkeepers of the Cite; he wanted to examine the rulers of society, and while he watched them like a naturalist, they might make what contortions they pleased. How did one of his contemporaries describe him? "When Menippe leaves his home, it is for the purpose of studying the att.i.tudes of the whole human race and of painting them from the life. But he is not merely a portrait-painter, he is an anatomist as well. Do you see that vain and arrogant fellow in the midst of his good fortune? He is enchanted to think Menippe is admiring him. What a mistake! At this very moment Menippe is dissecting him and preparing him as a specimen for a public lecture in the schools. Not a vein, not a fibre will escape him, and from that man's heart he will draw the inmost springs of pa.s.sion and expose the circulation of every vice."