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"The disease of our age is to want to make jokes about everything," he complains. To poor Vauvenargues life was not a laughing matter. His health had been completely ruined by the disastrous campaigns in Austria, and by the hardships of garrison life; and he was feeling more and more sharply that pinch of genteel poverty which is the hardest of all to bear.
A little lower down, on the same hill as Virgil, Xenophon, with simple bearing, looking in no way like a general, but rather resembling a priest of the Muses, would be seen gathering round him the Attics of every tongue and of every nation, the Addisons, Pellissons, Vauvenargues all who feel the value of an easy persuasiveness, an exquisite simplicity, and a gentle negligence mingled with ornament.
It distinguishes Vauvenargues at once from all the great French moralists who preceded him, from La Rochefoucauld with his savage cynicism, from Pascal with his contempt of the natural man.
He says that he "hated scorn of human things." To this we must presently return, but we may pause to note it here, as a faint light thrown over the obscurity of his adolescence. The Marquis of Mirabeau was the cousin of Vauvenargues and almost exactly his coeval.
The stock moralist, like the commonplace orator of the pulpit, fails to touch the hearts of men or to affect their lives, for lack of delicacy, of sympathy, and of freshness; he attempts to compensate for this by excess of emphasis, and that more often disgusts us than persuades. Vauvenargues, on the other hand, is remarkable for delicacy and half-reserved tenderness.
What pleasure can a man have in being a soldier if he possesses neither talent for war, nor the esteem of his men, nor a taste for glory? It is Vauvenargues himself, who had seen all classes of officers, who asks that question. From his "Réflexions" of 1746 a chapter on "Our Armies at the Present Moment" was omitted, and not published in its proper sequence until long after his death.
La Bruyere, with a broader outlook upon humanity, had much of the same fine analysis, with less conciseness and elegance of expression. Vauvenargues and Joubert were his legitimate successors. But how far removed in spirit! "The body has graces," writes Vauvenargues, "the mind has talents; has the heart only vices? And man capable of reason, shall he be incapable of virtue?"
It is from the point of view of the moralist that these strictures are now important; they show us that Vauvenargues in his reiterated recommendation of virtue and military glory did not regard those qualities from the Cornelian point of view, which he looked upon as fostering a pompous and falsely "fastueux" conception of life.
The only thing which really interested Vauvenargues was the social duty of man, and to discover what that is he attempted to define morals, politics and religion. He had an intense desire for clear guidance, and he waited for the heavenly spark to fall. He said to himself, before he made it plain to others, that if we are not guided by truth, we fall into the pit.
You will still encounter me now and then, moving absently through the crowd, or wandering in some green place, as in the garden of the Luxembourg Vauvenargues used to meet the wounded of the great battle, keeping apart in the narrower walks, and leaving the broad central ways for lighter feet than theirs.
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