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Updated: May 12, 2025
Similar theories of human nature run through the maxims of Esprit and Saint Evremond, without the exquisite turn which makes each one of La Rochefoucauld's a gem in itself. His tone was that of a disappointed courtier, with a vein of sadness only half disguised by cold philosophy and bitter cynicism.
I only ask that you dispatch a reliable messenger to Blois. But hear me out first. In virtue as much of La Rochefoucauld's letters as of the sentiments which the Chevalier heard me express, I became the honoured guest at his chateau. Three days after my arrival I sustained a shock by the unexpected appearance at Canaples of St. Auban.
For the last ten years of La Rochefoucauld's life she was one of the closest observers of the famous sedentary friendship. 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.
Being most sensitive to pain, as well as to pleasure, he was an exception to that rule of Rochefoucauld's "nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui." He did not bear easily the misfortunes of others, and the evils of his own lot were heavy enough. They saddened him; but neither illness, nor his poignant anxiety for others, could sour a nature so unselfish.
His self-love took the shape of a brilliancy that is sometimes false. He is tricked out in paste for diamonds, now and then, like a vain, provincial beauty at a ball. "A clever man would frequently be much at a loss," he says, "in stupid company." One has seen this embarrassment of a wit in a company of dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in this world of men and women.
I shall never forget what happened to us at the death of the Prince of Vaudemont's son, by which M. de la Rochefoucauld's family came in for a good inheritance. We were at Marly. The King had been stag-hunting. M. de Chevreuse, whom I found when the King was being unbooted, proposed that we should go and pay our compliments to M. de la Rochefoucauld. We went.
What bullyism is to the English, shrewdness to the Yankee, and intrigue to the Italian, is finesse, which is a union of insight and address, to the French. This normal attribute is another proof how the economy of Gallic life is reduced to an art. It is the expression in manners of Rochefoucauld's maxims, of Richelieu's policy, of Talleyrand's cunning.
"Many be the thyrsus-bearers, few the Mystics," as the Greek proverb runs. "Many are called, few are chosen." As to friendship being "a reciprocity of interests," the saying is but one of those which Rochefoucauld's vanity imposed on his wit. Very witty it is not, and it is emphatically untrue. "Old men console themselves by giving good advice for being no longer able to set bad examples."
We soon learn to echo Rochefoucauld's words as he entered Mazarin's carriage, 'everything happens in France; and, like Goethe, cast ourselves on the waves of accident with a more than Quixotic presage, if not of actual adventure, at least of adventurous observation; for it is a realm where Fashion, the capricious tyrant of modern civilization, has her birth, where the 'vielle femme remplissait une mission importante et tutelaire pour tous les âges; where the raconteur exists not less in society than in literature; the elysium of the scholar, the nucleus of opinion, the arena of pleasure, and the head-quarters of experiment, scientific, political, artistic, and social.
How distinctly may be read the political vicissitudes of France in her literature, classic, highly finished, keen, and formal, when a monarch was idolized and authors wrote only for courts and scholars: Bossuet, with his rhetorical graces; La Bruyere, with his gallery of characters, not one of which was moulded among the people; De la Rochefoucauld's maxims, drawn from the arcana of fashionable life; Racine, whose heroes die with an immaculate couplet and speak the faint echoes of Grecian or Roman sentiment!
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