Bernard Le Bouyer de La Rochefoucauld

“ The King, nevertheless, was exceedingly dissatisfied with the judgment. He explained himself to that effect at his dinner, and in a manner but little advantageous to the Parliament, and prepared himself to receive the complaints he expected would be laid before him. But the obstinacy of M. de la Rochefoucauld, which turned into vexation against himself, rendered it impossible for us to take any steps in the matter, and so overwhelmed me with displeasure, that I retired to La Trappe during Passion Week in order to recover myself. ”

“ The old wretch, by these feelings, justified that cold-blooded idea of La Rochefoucauld's, that "there is something in the misfortunes of our best friends which does not displease us." The disgusting brat, with his tawny cheeks and weasel face, enjoyed and participated in the mirth of the one-eyed hag. The Schoolmaster tripped again, and the urchin exclaimed:
"Open your peepers, old fellow; look about you. You are going the wrong way. What capers you are cutting! Can't you see your way? Why don't you wipe your eye-glasses?" ”

“ That doctrine of the predominance of the heart over the head, which has brought forth so many pernicious and destructive fantasies in the history of social thought, represented in his case no more than a reaction against the great detractors of humanity. Rochefoucauld had surveyed mankind exclusively from the point of their vain and egoistic propensities, and his aphorisms are profoundly true of all persons in whom these propensities are habitually supreme, and of all the world in so far as these propensities happen to influence them. ”

“ From the time he ceased to take part in public life, Rochefoucauld's real glory began. Having acted the various parts of soldier, politician, and lover with but small success, he now commenced the part of moralist, by which he is known to the world.
Living in the most brilliant society that France possessed, famous from his writings, distinguished from the part he had taken in public affairs, he formed the centre of one of those remarkable French literary societies, a society which numbered among its members La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau. ”

“ It is a complete mistake to look upon La Rochefoucauld as a monster, or even as a Timon. Without insisting, at all events for the moment, on the plain effect of his career on his intellect, but yet accepting the evidence that much of his bitterness was the result of bad health, sense of failure, shyness, foiled ambition, we have to ask ourselves what he gave to French thought in exchange for the illusions which he so rudely tore away. In dealing with any savage moralist, we are obliged to turn from the abstract question: Why did he say these things? ”

“ M. Sainte Beuve says, that unless we study this first part of Rochefoucauld's life, we shall never understand his maxims. The bitter disappointment of the passionate love, the high hopes then formed, the deceit and treachery then witnessed, furnished the real key to their meaning. The cutting cynicism of the morality was built on the ruins of that chivalrous ambition and romantic affection. He saw his friend Cinq Mars sent to the scaffold, himself betrayed by men whom he had trusted, and the only reason he could assign for these actions was intense selfishness.
Meanwhile, Richelieu died. ”

“ This chateau, built just two hundred years before that date, still exists, a noble relic of feudal France, and a place of pilgrimage for lovers of the author of the "Maximes."
No one was ever more suddenly and more completely cured of a whole system of existence than was La Rochefoucauld by the wound which was so nearly fatal. He said, "It is impossible for any man who has escaped from civil war to plunge into it again." For him, at all events, it was impossible. His only wish in 1653 was to bury himself and his slow convalescence among his woods at Verteuil. ”

“ While occupied with party strife and faction in Paris, Madame de Chevreuse left him, and formed an alliance with the Duc de Nemours. Rochefoucauld still loved her. It was, probably, thinking of this that he afterwards wrote, "Jealousy is born with love, but does not die with it." He endeavoured to get Madame de Chatillon, the old mistress of the Duc de Nemours, reinstated in favour, but in this he did not succeed. The Duc de Nemours was soon after killed in a duel. The war went on, and after several indecisive skirmishes, the decisive battle was fought at Paris, in the Faubourg St. ”

“ The reflection is always acute, and seems at whiles to anticipate the thought of La Rochefoucauld—doubtless because both drew from common sources; but though the doctrine and spirit be almost identical, Gracián nowhere approaches La Rochefoucauld's metallic brilliancy and concise perfection. He is not content to deliver his maxim, and have done with it: he adds—so to say—elaborate postscripts and epigrammatic [340] amplifications, which debase the maxim to a platitude. Mr. John Morley's remark, that "some of his aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace," is scarcely too severe. ”

“ Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work. ”

“ I have again heard ——’s last words, ‘I love you, for my passions are stronger than my reason: your being good, gentle, and handsome justify me: for the sake of others be discreet.’ I will indeed! Rochefoucauld lay upon my table: he opened it at the 514th maxim, which he observed was fallacious, and gave himself as a contradictory proof, ‘On passe souvent de l’amour à l’ambition; mais on ne revient guère de l’ambition à l’amour.’
On February 15, 1794, the Websters left Florence on their way to Rome, taking the road which passes Siena and Lake Bolsena. ”

“ Into this plot Rochefoucauld threw himself with all his energy; his connexion with the Queen brought him back to his old love Mdlle. d'Hautefort, and led him to her party, which he afterwards followed. The course he took shut him off from all chance of Court favour. The King regarded him with coldness, the Cardinal with irritation. Although the Bastile and the scaffold, the fate of Chalais and Montmorency, were before his eyes, they failed to deter him from plotting. He was about twenty-three; returning to Paris, he warmly sided with the Queen. ”

“ Someone has said that few ever less practically recognised the doctrines of Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld’s maxims, than did Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld himself, and the aphorisms have been criticised, and exception has again and again been taken to them, not perhaps altogether unreasonably; but in any case he justified himself of his dictum that “love [25] is the smallest part of gallantry”; for when at last—and it took some time—Marsillac recognised his old scapegrace chum of the Loches château, homage and admiration he yielded her indeed ”

“ We dislike to be told of our faults, while we only like to be told of our neighbour's. Notwithstanding Rousseau's assertion, it is young men, who, before they know their own faults and only know their neighbours', that read and thoroughly appreciate Rochefoucauld. ”

“ The Duke de Rochefoucauld died with philosophic tranquillity, at Paris, in 1680, in his sixty-eighth year. This nobleman wrote "Mémoires de la Règne d'Anne d'Autriche," 2 vols. 12mo., 1713, an energetic and faithful representation of that fretful predicament as Macihiavelli with regard to political morality. J. J. Rousseau, who was certainly not free from selfishness, has abused La Rochefoucauld's maxims, and yet, in his "Emile," he observes that "selfishness is the mainspring of all our actions;" ”

“ Irritated and disgusted, Rochefoucauld went with the Duc d'Enghein, who was then joining the army, on a campaign, and here he found the one love of his life, the Duke's sister, Mdme. de Longueville. This lady, young, beautiful, and accomplished, obtained a great ascendancy over Rochefoucauld, and was the cause of his taking the side of Condé in the subsequent civil war. Rochefoucauld did not stay long with the army. He was badly wounded at the siege of Mardik, and returned from thence to Paris. On recovering from his wounds, the war of the Fronde broke out. ”

“ Among the moderns, La Rochefoucauld, Saint-Evremond, and La Bruyère are admired by all judicious readers. From these French writers Boyer has selected materials for the groundwork of his collection. He has added passages from Antoninus, Pascal, and Gratian; from the English authors Bacon, Cowley, L'Estrange, Raleigh, Temple, Dryden, Wycherley, Brown and others; and from his own pen. They range from a single line to a passage of several pages. Those of English origin are distinguished by "an Asterism," his own remarks by inverted commas. Other matter is unmarked. ”

“ At the age of eighteen he entered the house of La Rochefoucauld as a servant, and in 1646 became secretary to François de la Rochefoucauld, author of the Maximes. Resourceful and quick-witted, he rendered services to his master during the Fronde, in his intrigues with the parliament, the court or the princes. In these negotiations he made the acquaintance of Condé, whom he wished to help to escape from the chateau of Vincennes; of Mazarin, for whom he negotiated the reconciliation with the princes; and of Nicolas Fouquet. After the Fronde he engaged in financial affairs, thanks to Fouquet. ”

“ Yet as a faithful presentation of human selfishness, and of you and me in so far as we happen to be mainly selfish, the odious mirror has its uses by showing us what manner of man we are or may become. Let us not forget either that not quite all is selfishness in La Rochefoucauld. Everybody knows his saying that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. There is a subtle truth in this, that to be in too great a hurry to discharge an obligation is itself a kind of ingratitude. Nor is there any harm in the reflection that no fool is so troublesome as the clever fool ”

“ Pope was a Roman Catholic, though there was little to show it in his writings, and the underlying thought of his famous Essay on Man was furnished him by Bolingbroke. The letters of the cold-hearted Chesterfield to his son were accepted as a manual of conduct, and La Rochefoucauld's cynical maxims were quoted as authority on life and human nature. Said Swift:
As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew
From nature, I believe them true.
They argue no corrupted mind
In him ”

“ His son François was the author of the Maxims, and the son of the latter acquired for his house the estates of La Roche-Guyon and Liancourt by his marriage with Jeanne Charlotte du Plessis-Liancourt. Alexandre, duc de La Rochefoucauld (d. 1762) , left two daughters, who married into the Roye branch of the family. Of the numerous branches of the family the most famous are those of Roucy, Roye, Bayers, Doudeauville, Randan and Estissac, which all furnished distinguished statesmen and soldiers. ”

“ But as M. de Sainte-Beuve sententiously puts it, in one of his maxims after the manner of La Rochefoucauld, “La plupart des défauts qui éclatent dans la seconde moitié de la vie existaient en nous tout formés bien auparavant; mais ils étaient masqués, en quelque sorte, par la pudeur de la jeunesse.” The faults of after-life were there, and [259] only the modest reserve and self-restraint of youth kept them under cover. With riper years comes less regard for others, and the cover is taken off. ”

“ With the exception that his wife's name was Mdlle. Vivonne, and that she was the mother of five sons and three daughters, nothing is known of her. While Rochefoucauld and his father were at Blois, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, one of the beauties of the Court, and the mistress of Louis, was banished to Tours. She and Rochefoucauld met, and soon became intimate, and for a time she was destined to be the one motive of his actions. The Duchesse was engaged in a correspondence with the Court of Spain and the Queen. ”

“ Doctor Bowdler looked uncomfortable.
"A selfish French Philister, La Rochefoucauld!" he blurted out. "I feel as if I had been steeped in meanness and vulgarity all my life, when I read him."
"He knew men," said the other, coolly, resetting a pocket set of chessmen on the board where they had been playing,—"Frenchmen," shortly.
"Doctor Birkenshead," after a pause, "you appear to have no sympathies with either side, in this struggle for the nation's life. You neither attack nor defend our government." ”

“ He came to place the homage of the prime minister at the feet of Madame de Chevreuse, and to strive to ally the old and the new favorites. La Rochefoucauld, always eager to assume a prominent character together with the air of a great politician, asserts that he "entreated Madame de Chevreuse not to attempt to rule the queen at first, but simply to endeavor to regain the place in her heart and affections of which she had been deprived, and to place herself in a position some day to protect or to destroy the cardinal, according to circumstances and his future course of conduct." ”

“ CHAPTER V JOHN MINUTE'S LEGACY
La Rochefoucauld has said that prudence and love are inconsistent. May Nuttall, who had never explored the philosophies of La Rochefoucauld, had nevertheless seen that quotation in the birthday book of an acquaintance, and the saying had made a great impression upon her. She was twenty-one years of age, at which age girls are most impressionable and are little influenced by the workings of pure reason. ”

“ The Envoy from Holstein, M. Dumont, was very much attached to Madame de La Rochefoucauld, one of Madame de Berri’s ‘dames du palais’. She was very pretty, but gifted with no other than personal charms. Some one was joking her on this subject, and insinuated that she had treated her lover very favourably. ”