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«Si toutes les montagnes, et les Alpes par exemple, avoient tous les autres caractères qu'exige une telle formation celui-l

And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped it. Its influence can be traced in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through its influence that Moliere found it difficult to get some of his plays staged.

On one occasion, he really treats Rome as if it had been nothing more than a post station on the road from Florence to Naples; but, again, if the scenery and people take his fancy, "he has a royal reluctance to move on, as his own hero showed when his eye glanced on the grands caractères rouges, tracés par la main de Carathis?... Qui me donnera des loix? s'écria le Caliphe."

There was great danger, or so it would seem to a timid man like La Bruyère, in affronting public opinion with a book so full of sarcasm and reproof, so unflinching in its way of dealing with success, as the "Caractères." He adopted a singular mode of self-protection.

His modesty led him to distrust his own taste, and it is worthy of notice that the corrections he made to please Voltaire often reduce the vigour of his thought in its original expression. How harshly his tastes were condemned at home may be judged by an anecdote about his father which occurs in the "Essai sur quelques caractères":

"Je ne connais pas personnellement M. Heger, mais je sais qu'il est peu de caracteres aussi nobles, aussi admirables que le sien. Il est un des membres les plus zeles de cette Societe de S. Vincent de Paul dont je t'ai deja parle, et ne se contente pas de servir les pauvres et les malades, mais leur consacre encore les soirees.

These examples gave him his great chance, and he built them up, those exemplary "portraits" of his, with infinite labour, accumulating details to make a type, and sometimes, it is possible, accumulating too many. The result is that the "Caractères" are sometimes a little laboured; I do not know any other fault that can be laid to their charge.

The author of the "Maximes" was the head of one of the great princely houses of France. The author of the "Caractères" was the type of the plebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the quintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyère is not less a specimen of the middle class. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his own joke about his ancestry.

What perhaps strikes us most, when we put down the "Caractères" after a close re-perusal of one of the most readable books in all literature, is its extraordinary sustained vitality. It hums and buzzes in our memory long after we have turned the last page.

Some fleecy clouds were speeding across the clear ether. "No," she answered slowly; "I think I shall go to Corsica. Tell me," she added, after a pause "I suppose I have Corsican blood in my veins?" "I suppose so," admitted Mademoiselle Brun, reluctantly. "Chaque homme a trois caracteres: celui qu'il a, celui qu'il montre, et celui qu'il croit avoir."