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You tempt me to revise the wisest of La Rochefoucauld's maxims, and say that every woman is at heart a snake. You owe everything to me; yet you are not content. Without my help you would still be carrying a banner in the chorus. Unless I continue my patronage, that is what you must go back to. Don't imagine that I am treating with you out of sentiment.
A contemporary MS. says of that lady, "Elle flatte fort l'amour propre quand elle parle aux gens." 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
Methuen's re-issue of an old and excellent translation of Rochefoucauld's Maxims, edited by Mr. George Powell. The book is a little large for tabloids. It runs to nearly two hundred pages, and it might have been more conveniently divided by ten or even by a hundred. But still, as Rochefoucauld is the very medicine-man of maxims, we will leave it at that.
"I was yesterday at M. de La Rochefoucauld's," writes Madame de Sevigne, in 1680. "I found him uttering loud shrieks; his pain was such that his endurance was quite overcome without a single scrap remaining. The excessive pain upset him to such a degree that he was sitting out in the open air with a violent fever upon him.
He was walking by the side of the brook, and evidently absorbed in thought. It was the trembling of Lady Florence's hand as it lay on Cleveland's arm, that induced him to stop short in an animated commentary on Rochefoucauld's character of Cardinal de Retz, and look round. "Ha, most meditative Jacques!" said he; "and what new moral hast thou been conning in our Forest of Ardennes?"
The case is overstated, no doubt; but the strength of La Rochefoucauld's position can only be appreciated when one has felt for oneself the keen arrows of his wit. As one turns over his pages, the sentences strike into one with a deadly force of personal application; sometimes one almost blushes; one realizes that these things are cruel, that they are humiliating, and that they are true.
She learned Rochefoucauld's Maxims by heart an unfortunate guide, to whom doubtless she partly owes her cynical appreciation of human motives. She possessed a quick, logical mind and prodigious memory, while passing years developed sparkling wit, fascinating manners and woman's crown of beauty.
On arriving at the battle-field, whither he had brought with him but three hundred horse, at the very moment when, with this weak escort, he was preparing to charge the deep column of the Duke of Anjou, he received from La Rochefoucauld's horse a kick which broke one of the bones of his leg; and he had already crushed an arm by a fall.
It would be a sweet thought. Saint-Evremond to Ninon de l'Enclos Love Banishes Old Age Your life, my well beloved, has been too illustrious not to be lived in the same manner until the end. Do not permit M. de la Rochefoucauld's "hell" to frighten you; it was a devised hell he desired to construct into a maxim. Pronounce the word "love" boldly, and that of "old age" will never pass your lips.
He was walking by the side of the brook, and evidently absorbed in thought. It was the trembling of Lady Florence's hand as it lay on Cleveland's arm, that induced him to stop short in an animated commentary on Rochefoucauld's character of Cardinal de Retz, and look round. "Ha, most meditative Jacques!" said he; "and what new moral hast thou been conning in our Forest of Ardennes?"
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