Читать книгу Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men & Women (Vol. 1-5) - Mary Shelley - Страница 11

Grimm, in his correspondence, records, that it was a saying of d'Alembert, that, in life, "Ce n'est qu'heur et malheur," that it was all luck or ill luck. The same thing may be said of many books; and, perhaps, of none more than that which has given literary celebrity to François, duke de la Rochefoucauld. The experience of a long life, spent for the most part in the very nucleus of the intrigues of party and the artifices of a court, reduced into sententious maxims, affords food for curiosity, while it flatters our idleness. The most indolent person may read a maxim, and ponder on its truth, and be led to meditate, without any violent exertion of mind. In addition, knowledge of the world, as it is called, always interests. Voltaire says of the "Maxims," "Though there is but one truth in this collection, which is that self-love is the motive of all, yet this thought is presented under such various aspects that it is always impressive. If we considered the pervading opinion of the book theoretically, we might be inclined to parody this remark, and say, "though there is but one multiformed falsehood in this collection,"—but we defer our consideration of the principles of this work till we have given an account of its author, who was no obscure man, meditating the lessons of wisdom in solitude, but the leader of a party, a soldier, a man of gallantry and of fashion; one such as is only produced, in its perfection, in a society highly cultivated; yet the foundations of his character were thrown in times of ignorance and turbulence."

The family of La Rochefoucauld is one of the noblest in France: it ranks equal with that of the sovereign, and enjoyed almost monarchical power when residing on its own possessions; while its influence might give preponderance to the party it espoused, and even shake the throne. François, the eldest son of the duke then in possession, was born at his paternal castle of Rochefoucauld, in Angoumois, in 1613, two years subsequent to the assassination of Henry IV. He grew up, therefore, during the reign of Louis XIII., and first came to court during the height of cardinal de Richelieu's power. His education had been neglected. Madame de Maintenon said of him, in after times, that "his physiognomy was prepossessing, his demeanour dignified; that he had great talent, and little knowledge." We have no details of his early life at court. He was the friend of the duchess de Chevreuse, favourite of the queen, Anne of Austria; and, when this lady was banished, the family of la Rochefoucauld fell into disgrace, and retired to the shelter of their estates.

But a few years before the nobles of France possessed greater power than the king himself. The short reign and wise administration of Henry IV. and Sully had infused a somewhat better spirit into the body politic of the kingdom than that which for forty years had torn the country with civil war; but the happy effects of that prosperous period were obliterated on the accession of Louis XIII. After a series of struggles, however, Richelieu became prime minister; and with unflinching courage, and resolute and merciless policy, he proceeded to crush the nobility, and to raise the monarchical power (invested, it may be said, in his own person,) into absolute rule. The nobles in those days did not plot to supplant each other in the favour of their royal master, nor to gain some place near the royal person; they aimed at supremacy over the king himself: reluctantly, and not without struggles that cost the lives and fortunes of many of the chief among them, did the nobles yield to the despotism of Richelieu. The mother of their sovereign was banished; his brother disgraced; his queen enslaved; the prisons filled with victims; the provinces with exiles; the blood of many flowed: the cardinal reigned secure, and the power of the contending nobles was reduced to feudal command in their own domains.

1642.

Ætat.

29.

At length Richelieu died; and, for a moment, his vanquished enemies fancied that their turn was come for acquiring dominion. The state prisons were thrown open; the exiles hastened to return. The friends of the family of la Rochefoucauld wrote to advise them to appear at court. The reigning duke and his sons immediately followed this counsel.20 His eldest son was called prince de Marsillac: his name and person were well known as the friend of the duchess of Chevreuse, and as a favourite of Anne of Austria. He has left us an account of that period, in which he details the high hopes of his party and subsequent disappointment.

"The persecution I had suffered," he writes21, "during the power of the cardinal de Richelieu, having finished with his life, I thought it right to return to court. The ill health of the king, and the disinclination that he manifested to confide his children and kingdom to the queen, made me hope that I might soon find important occasions for serving her, and of giving her, in the present state of things, the same marks of attachment which she had received from me on all occasions when her interests, and those of madame de Chevreuse, were in opposition to those of cardinal de Richelieu. I arrived at court; and found it as submissive to his will after his death as during his life. His relations and his creatures continued to enjoy all the advantages they had gained through him; and by a turn of fortune, of which there are few examples, the king, who hated him, and desired his fall, was obliged, not only to conceal his sentiments, but even to authorise the disposition made by the cardinal in his will of the principal employments and most important places in his kingdom. He chose cardinal Mazarin to succeed him in the government. Nevertheless, as the health of the king was deplorable, there was a likelihood that every thing would soon change, and that, the queen or monsieur (the duke of Orleans, brother to Louis XIII.) acquiring the regency, they would revenge on the followers of Richelieu the outrages they had received from himself."

1643.

Ætat.

30.

Affairs, however, took a very different turn. Mazarin and others, the creatures of and successors to Richelieu, were less arrogant, less ambitious, and less resolute than their master. They were willing to acquire power by allying themselves to the adverse party. Mazarin, in particular, felt that, on the death of Louis XIII., he should not possess influence enough to cope with the persons who, by rank, were destined to the regency; and he perceived, at once, that it was his best policy to become the friend, instead of the rival, of the queen and the duke of Orleans. Anne of Austria saw safety in encouraging him in this conduct. Mazarin grew into a favourite, and supplanted those who had stood by her during her years of adversity. Thus, while the surface of things appeared the same, the spirit was changed. Rochefoucauld saw that the queen entertained new views and new partialities, and was supported by the same party by which she had been hitherto oppressed. As her friend, he perceived the advantages she gained by this line of conduct, and, by prudent concessions, retained her regard. When the king died, and she became regent, Mazarin had made himself necessary to her, for it was by his policy that the other members of the council of the regency were reduced to insignificance; so that the queen, entirely attached to him, anticipated with something of aversion the reappearance of madame de Chevreuse, who, on the death of Louis XIII., hastened 1643 to return to Paris. The prince of Marsillac perceived her apprehensions, and asked her permission to meet madame de Chevreuse on her way, which the queen readily granted, hoping that the prince would dispose her former friend to seek the friendship of Mazarin. This was, indeed, Marsillac's purpose: he gave the fallen favourite the best advice that prudence could suggest, and the duchess promised to follow it. In this she failed. She fancied that she could supplant the cardinal in the queen's favour; she acted with arrogance; and her imprudence insured her ruin.

Le bon temps de la régence followed. For five years France enjoyed external and internal prosperity. The former was insured by the battle of Rocroi, and other successes, obtained by the prince of Condé and Turenne, against the power of Spain. The latter was more fallacious. The intrigues, cabals, and dissensions of the court were carried on with virulence. Manners became every day more and more corrupt—the gulf between Mazarin and his antagonists wider. We have little trace of Marsillac's conduct during this interval. He followed the campaigns, and served gallantly in several actions. He was present at the siege of Mardike, in which he was wounded in the shoulder, which obliged him to return to Paris. He bought the governorship of Poitou, and took up his residence there. He visited Paris, but want of money prevented his remaining. His secretary, Gourville, lets us into a view of the corruption of the times, when he details how he enriched his master by only obtaining from Emery, the comptroller of the finances, a man of low extraction, whose extortion, luxuriousness, and debauchery disgusted the nation, a passport for a thousand tons of wheat, to be brought from Poitou to the capital; and the profit he gained by this transaction enabled the prince, to his infinite joy, to remain in Paris.

1648.

Ætat.

35.

There can be little doubt that, at this time, he had immersed himself in political intrigue. Madame de Chevreuse was again banished; but affairs had taken another and more important aspect than mere intrigues and disputes among courtiers for royal favour. The extravagance of the court, and corruption of the times, had thrown the finances into disorder; and every means most subversive of the prosperity of the people, and of justice, was resorted to by Emery to supply the royal treasury. The consequence was universal discontent. Parliament resisted the court by its decrees; the populace of Paris supported parliament; and a regular system of resistance to the regent and her minister was formed. This opposition received the name of the Fronde: the persons who formed it were called Frondeurs. These were bent, the duke de la Rochefoucauld tells us, in his memoirs, on arresting the course of the calamities at hand; having the same object, though urged by a different motive, as those who were instigated by hatred of the cardinal. At first the remonstrances of parliament, and the opposition of the court, was a war of words only; but when the court, enraged at any opposition to its will, proceeded to arrest three principal members of parliament, the people of Paris rose in a body; the day of the barricades ensued, the members were set free, and the court forced to yield.

But the tumults did not end here: the celebrated De Retz, then coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris, who saw his towering ambition crushed by the distrust of the court, resolved to make himself feared; and, instead of permitting the spirit of sedition in the capital to subside, he excited it to its utmost. It became necessary for him, in the system of opposition that ensued, to secure some prince of the blood at the head of his party. His eyes turned towards the great Condé; but he continued faithful to the queen: the coadjutor was, therefore, forced to centre his hopes in this prince's younger brother, the prince of Conti. Rochefoucauld gives an account, in his memoirs, of the winning over of this prince. "The prince of Conti," he writes, "was ill satisfied at not possessing a place in the council, and even more at the neglect with which the prince of Condé treated him; and as he was entirely influenced by his sister, the duchess de Longueville, who was piqued at the indifference her elder brother displayed towards her, he abandoned himself without reserve to his resentment. This princess, who had a great share afterwards in these affairs, possessed all the advantages of talent and beauty to so great a degree, joined to so many charms, that it appeared as if nature had taken pleasure in forming a perfect and finished work in her: but these qualities lost a part of their brilliancy through a defect which was never before seen in a person of this merit; which was that, far from giving the law to those who had a particular adoration for her, she transfused herself so entirely into their sentiments that she entirely forgot her own. At this time the prince de Marsillac had a share in her heart; and, as he joined his ambition to his love, he inspired her with a taste for politics, to which she had a natural aversion, and took advantage of her wish to revenge herself on the prince of Condé by opposing Conti to him. De Retz was fortunate in his project, through the sentiments entertained by the brother and sister, who allied themselves to the Frondeurs by a treaty, into which the duke de Longueville was drawn by his hopes of succeeding, through the help of parliament, in his ill-founded pretensions of being treated like a prince of the blood."22

The state of tumult and street warfare into which Paris was plunged by these intrigues at last determined the queen to the most desperate measures: she resolved to escape from the capital, with the young king, the cardinal, and the whole court, and then to blockade it. In this plan she succeeded, through her admirable presence of mind and fearlessness. The court retreated to St. Germain. Here they were unprovided even with necessaries. They lived in disfurnished apartments, they slept on straw, and were exposed to a thousand hardships. The prince of Conti, and Marsillac, and the duke de Longueville followed the court. De Retz was confounded by their retreat; and sent the marquis de Noirmoutier to learn the cause of their secession, and, if possible, to bring them back. The motive of these princes in apparently deserting their party was, it would seem, to further their own private interests.23 Marsillac left his secretary, Gourville, behind, to negotiate with the leading members of parliament for the electing the prince of Conti generalissimo of the Parisian troops. When this transaction was arranged, the princes determined on their return to the capital. It was a matter of danger and difficulty to escape from St. Germain. When the method of so doing was arranged, Marsillac held a long conversation with Gourville, telling him what account he was to carry to Paris, in case he should be made prisoner, in which case he felt sure that he should be decapitated. Gourville, however, begged him to write his last instructions, as he was resolved to share his fortunes to the last. Their attempt, however, was attended with success: the adventurers made good their entrance into Paris; and, after some opposition, gained their point, principally through the appearance of the beautiful duchesses de Bouillon and Longueville, who presented themselves before the people of Paris with their children, and excited a commotion in their favour. The prince of Conti was elected generalissimo.

1649.

Ætat.

36.

Meanwhile Condé blockaded the metropolis; and the volunteers of Paris, composed of its citizens, poured out to resist the blockade. The warfare was of the most ridiculous kind: the people of Paris made a jest of their own soldiery, which excelled only in the talent of running away. These troops went to the field by thousands, dressed out in feathers and ribands: they fled if they encountered but 200 of the royal troops: when they returned, flying, they were received with laughter and shouts of ridicule. Couplets and epigrams were multiplied and showered upon them and their leaders; the populace were diverted, while the most frightful licence prevailed; blasphemy was added to licentiousness, and the bands of society were loosened, its core poisoned. At length the middling classes, most active at first in the work of sedition and lawlessness, got tired of the wickedness they saw exhibited round them, and of the dangers to which they were perpetually exposed. Blood was spilt, and they scarcely knew for what they fought: each side began to sigh for peace. De Retz failed in gaining the assistance of Turenne, for, corrupted by an emissary of Mazarin, the army of Turenne deserted him. The same arts were used to gain over the partisans of De Retz. The prince de Marsillac was suffering from a severe wound. He had headed a squadron sent out with other troops for the purpose of escorting some convoys of provisions. The party was attacked, and fled on the instant, with the exception of the party led by Marsillac, (who, de Retz observes, had more valour than experience) that kept the ground till the prince had a horse killed under him, and was seriously wounded himself, when he returned to Paris. This circumstance led him, probably, to listen more readily to the representations of Mazarin's emissaries. He became an entire convert to the desire for peace, and by degrees, though with difficulty, the prince of Conti and the duchess de Longueville were brought to acquiesce in its necessity.

1650.

Ætat.

37.

A sort of unsettled tranquillity was thus restored. After a time the court returned to Paris: but the peace was hollow, and the bad passions of men fermented still. The capital, with the exception of not being under arms, was in a state of perpetual and disgraceful tumult. The war of the Fronde has been named a tragic farce; for it was carried on as much by mutual insults and epigrams as by the sword. Never did mankind display so total a disregard for decency and moral law: churchmen acknowledged their mistresses openly; wives made no secret of favouring their lovers; and infamy became too common to render any one conspicuous. As the nobility of the Fronde were the most dissolute, so, by degrees, did it lose favour with the people. Each noble sought his own interests: each changed side as his hopes changed. The Fronde lost many of its chief partisans. The prince of Condé became reconciled to the prince of Conti; and he, and the duke and duchess de Longueville, and the prince Marsillac, now duke de la Rochefoucauld, through the recent death of his father, fell off from the Fronde, at the same time that they continued to oppose and insult the queen and Mazarin. Meanwhile De Retz was eager to renew a warfare which raised him to the rank of leader. He was still intriguing—still, as it were, covertly in arms,—continuing to exercise unbounded influence over the people of Paris, and to carry on intrigues with the discontented nobles. The court, meanwhile, thoroughly frightened by the late events, was bent on weakening its enemies by any means, however treacherous and violent. While, therefore, the false security of peace prevented their being on their guard, suddenly one day the prince of Condé, his brother, and brother-in-law, were arrested, and sent to Vincennes; and the queen sent to the duchess de Longueville, requiring her immediate attendance. Rochefoucauld had seen reason to suspect this piece of treachery, and had wished to warn the princes; but the person he intrusted with the commission failed to execute it. When the duke de Vrillière brought the order to the duchess requiring her attendance, Rochefoucauld persuaded her, instead of obeying, to quit Paris on the instant, and hasten to Normandy, to raise her friends in Rouen and Havre de Grace, in favour of her husband and brothers. Rochefoucauld accompanied her; but the duchess having failed in her attempt, and being pressed by the enemy, was forced to embark, and take refuge in Holland, while Rochefoucauld repaired to his government at Poitou. All was now prepared for war. Turenne, at Stenay, was in revolt. The dukes of Bouillon and la Rochefoucauld collected troops in Guienne. Rochefoucauld was the first in arms, though he had no resource, except his credit and friends, in collecting troops. He made the ceremony of the interment of his father the pretext for assembling the nobility and tenants of his province, and thus raised 2000 horse and 600 foot.24 His first attempt was to succour Saumur, besieged by the king's troops. But Mazarin had not been idle: he had engaged what Frederick the Great called his yellow hussars in his favour, and, by bribery and corruption, possessed himself of the town. After this Bordeaux became the seat of war. Bouillon and Rochefoucauld having entrenched themselves in that city, and the royal troops attacking it. Ill defended by fortifications, it soon capitulated, but obtained favourable terms. Bouillon and Rochefoucauld were allowed to retire. Mazarin exerted all his powers of persuasion to gain them, but they continued faithful to the princes. Rochefoucauld retreated once again to his government of Poitou, discontented at having received no compensation for his house of Verteuil, which the king's party had razed.

Soon after the divisions in France took somewhat a new face. De Retz gained over the duke of Orleans, and united himself to the party of the princes. The Fronde, thus reinforced, turned all its force against Mazarin. He was forced to fly, and the princes were liberated. It is not here that a detail of the strange events of the war of the Fronde can be given. They are introduced only because Rochefoucauld took a prominent part. Changes were perpetually taking place in the state of parties; and a sort of confusion reigns throughout, arising from the want of any noble or disinterested object in any of the partisans, that at once confuses and wearies the mind. To detail the conduct of a nobility emancipated from all legal as well as all moral and religious restraint,—bent only on the acquisition of power,—influenced by hatred and selfishness,—is no interesting task. It may be instructive; for we see what an aristocracy may become, when it throws off the control of a court, whose interest it is to enforce order,—and of the people, who spontaneously love and admire virtue,—and at once tramples on religion and law. The nobles of the Fronde had lost the dignity and grandeur of feudal power; they aimed at no amelioration for the state of the kingdom; they neither loved freedom nor power in any way permanently advantageous, even to their own order. Turbulent, dissolute, and unprincipled, they acted the parts of emancipated slaves, not of freemen asserting their rights. We seek for some trace of better things in Rochefoucauld's own views and actions, but do not find it. He avows ambition; that and his love for the duchess de Longueville are all the motives that are discernible in his own account of his conduct. When, however, we find madame de Maintenon, who was an excellent and an impartial judge, praise him, in the sequel, as a faithful, true, and prudent friend, we are willing to throw the blame from him on those from whom he divided. Madame de Longueville was certainly guilty of inconstancy; and we are told how entirely she was influenced by the person to whom she attached herself. She drew the prince of Conti after her. Meanwhile, the party in opposition to Mazarin became divided into the new and old Fronde. No one could tell to which De Retz would adhere long. He, for the moment, headed the old, the prince of Condé the new. Rochefoucauld hated De Retz, we are told, with a hatred seldom felt, except by rival men of talent.25 He now, therefore, sided with Condé, and endeavoured to alienate him entirely from the coadjutor, and to draw over his brother and sister to the same side. He entered zealously into the plan of breaking off a marriage proposed between the prince of Conti and mademoiselle de Chevreuse, who was known to be the mistress of De Retz, which event widened the separation between the parties. This led to more violent scenes than ever. Condé was forced to retreat, and only appeared strongly guarded; and the queen took advantage of this show of violence to accuse him of high treason to parliament. This occasioned the most tumultuous scenes. The two parties met in the Palace of Justice; both Condé and De Retz surrounded by followers eager to draw their swords on each other,—none more eager than Rochefoucauld, whom De Retz detested, and (if we believe the duke's own account) had several times sought to have assassinated. On this occasion Rochefoucauld was on the alert to revenge himself. Molé, the intrepid and courageous president, alone, by his resolution and firmness, prevented bloodshed. He implored the prince and the coadjutor to withdraw their troops from the palace: they assented. De Retz left the hall to command his followers to retire. Rochefoucauld was sent by Condé on a similar mission to his partisans. This was a more difficult task than they had apprehended: both parties were on the point of coming to blows; and the coadjutor hastened to return to the great chamber, when an extraordinary scene, related by the duke in his memoirs, ensued. He had returned before the coadjutor, and De Retz, pushing the door open, got half in, when Rochefoucauld pressed against it on the other side, and held his enemy's body in the doorway, half in and half out of the chamber. "This opportunity might have tempted the duke de la Rochefoucauld," writes the duke himself. "After all that had passed, both public and private reasons led him to desire to destroy his most mortal enemy; as, besides the facility thus offered of revenging himself, while he avenged the prince for the shame and disgrace he had endured, he saw also that the life of the coadjutor ought to answer for the disorder he occasioned. But, on the other side, he considered that no combat had been begun; that no one came against him to defend the coadjutor; that he had not the same pretext for attacking him as if blows had already been interchanged—the followers of the prince, also, who were near the duke, did not reflect on the extent of the service they might have rendered their master in this conjuncture;—in fine, the duke would not commit an action that seemed cruel, and the rest were irresolute and unprepared; and thus time was given to liberate the coadjutor from the greatest danger in which he had ever found himself."26 Rochefoucauld adds the description of another incident, not less characteristic of the times, that happened subsequently. After this scene in the Palace of Justice, the coadjutor avoided going there or meeting Condé; but, one day, the prince was in his carriage with Rochefoucauld, followed by an immense crowd of people, when they met the coadjutor, in his pontifical robes, leading a procession of relics and images of saints. The prince stopped, out of respect to the church, and the coadjutor went on till he came opposite to the prince, whom he saluted respectfully, giving both him and his companion his benediction. They received it with marks of reverence; while the people around, excited by the rencontre, uttered a thousand imprecations against De Retz, and would have torn him to pieces, had not the prince caused his followers to interfere to his rescue. In all this we see nothing of the high bearing of a man of birth, nor the gallantry and generosity of a soldier. That Rochefoucauld did not murder De Retz scarcely redeems him, since we find that he entertained the thought, and almost repented not having put it in execution. In the heat of this quarrel the coadjutor had named him coward: ("I lied," De Retz writes in his memoirs, "for he was assuredly very brave;") giving him, at the same time, his nickname, Franchise, which he got in ridicule of his assumption of the appearance of frankness as a cloak to double-dealing and real astuteness of disposition. We are willing, however, to suppose that he practised this sort of astuteness only with his enemies, and that he continued frank and true to his friends. He had now become the firm partisan and friend of Condé. This prince, a soldier in heart and profession, grew impatient of the miserable tumults and brawls of Paris, and resolved to assert his authority in arms. He retreated to the south of France, and raised Guienne, Poitou, and Anjou against the court. He was surrounded by the prince of Conti, the duchess de Longueville, Rochefoucauld, Nemours, and many others of his boldest and most powerful adherents. He was received in Bordeaux with joy and acclamations: ten thousand men were levied; and Spain eagerly lent her succour to support him in his rebellion. This was, for France, the most disastrous period of its civil dissensions. All the blessings of civilisation were lost; commerce, the arts, and the sciences were, as it were, obliterated from the face of society; the industrious classes were reduced to misery and want; the peasantry had degenerated into bandits; lawlessness and demoralisation were spread through the whole country. The total disregard for honour and virtue that characterised the higher classes became ferocity and dishonesty in the lower.

Condé, into whose purposes and aims we have small insight,—that he hated Mazarin, and desired power, is all we know,—reaped little advantage from the state to which he assisted, at least, to reduce his country. His friends and partisans quarrelled with each other; supplies fell off; he saw himself on the brink of ruin; and determined to retrieve himself by a total change of plan. His scheme was to cross the whole of France, and to put himself at the head of the veteran troops of the duke de Nemours. The undertaking was encompassed with dangers. His friends at first dissuaded, but, finding him resolved, they implored permission to accompany him. He made such division as he considered advantageous for his affairs; leaving Marsin behind, with the prince of Conti, to maintain his interests in Guienne, and taking with him Rochefoucauld, his young son, the prince de Marsillac, and several other nobles and officers. Gourville, Rochefoucauld's secretary, who had made several journeys to and fro between Paris and Bordeaux, and was a man of singular activity, astuteness, and presence of mind, was to serve as their guide.

1652.

Ætat.

39.

The party set out on Palm Sunday, disguised as simple cavaliers; the servants and followers being sent forward by water. The journey was continued by day and night, almost with the same horses. The adventurers never remained for two hours together in the same place, either for repose or refreshment. Sometimes they stopped at the houses of two or three gentlemen, friends of one of the party, for a short interval of rest, and for the purpose of buying horses: but these gentlemen were far from suspecting that Condé was among them, and spoke so freely, that he heard much concerning himself and his friends which had never before reached his ears. At other times they took shelter in outhouses, or poor public-houses by the way side, while Gourville went to forage in the towns. Their fare was meager enough. In one little inn they found nothing but eggs. Condé insisted on making the omelet himself, piquing himself on his skill: the hostess showed him how to turn it; but he, using too much force in the manœuvre, threw the supper of himself and his friends into the fire. During the fatigues of this journey Rochefoucauld was attacked by his first fit of the gout; but their greatest embarrassment arose from the young prince de Marsillac, who almost sunk under the fatigues to which he was exposed. Gourville was the safeguard of the party: he foraged for food, answered impertinent questions, invented subterfuges, and executed a thousand contrivances to ensure their safety, or extricate them from danger. When refreshing their horses in a large village a peasant recognised Condé, and named him. Gourville, hearing this, began to laugh, and told his friends as they came up, and they joining in bantering the poor man, he did not know what to believe. All the party, except the prince at the head of it, whose frame was of iron, were overcome by fatigue. After passing the Loire, they were nearly discovered by the sentinels at La Charité, whom they encountered through a mistake of the guide. The sentinel demanded who went there: Gourville replied that they were officers of the court, who desired to enter. The Condé, pursuing the same tone, bade the man go to the governor, and ask leave for them to be admitted into the town; some soldiers, who were loitering near, were about to take this message, when Gourville exclaimed, addressing the prince, "You have time to sleep here, but our congé ends to-morrow, and we must push on;" and he proceeded, followed by the others, who said to the prince, "You can remain if you like;" but Condé, as if discontented, yet not liking to part company, followed, telling them that they were strange people, and sending his compliments to the governor. After passing the river, their dangers were far from over. Some of the companions of the prince were recognised: the report began to spread that he was of the party. They left the high road, and continued their journey to Chatillon in such haste, that they went, according to Rochefoucauld's account, the incredible distance of thirty-five leagues, with the same horses, in one day—a day full of dangerous recognitions and misadventures: they were surrounded by troops; and, one after the other, Condé was obliged to send his companions on various missions to ensure his safety, till he was left at last with only Rochefoucauld, and his son, the prince de Marsillac. They proceeded guardedly, Marsillac an hundred steps in advance of, and Rochefoucauld at the same distance behind, Condé, so that he might receive notice of any danger, and have some chance of saving himself. They had not proceeded far in this manner before they heard various reports of a pistol, and, at the same moment, perceived four cavaliers on their left, approaching at full trot. Believing themselves discovered, they resolved to charge these four men, determined to die rather than be taken; but, on their drawing near, they found that it was one of their own number, who had returned, accompanied by three gentlemen; and altogether they proceeded to Chatillon. Here Condé heard of the situation of the army he was desirous of joining; but he heard, at the same time, that he was in the close neighbourhood of danger, several of the king's guard being then at Chatillon. They set out again at midnight; and were nearly discovered and lost at the end of their adventure, being recognised by many persons. However, as it turned out, this served instead of injuring them, as several mounted on horseback, and accompanied the party till they fell in with the advanced guard of the army, close to the forest of Orleans. They were hailed by a qui vive. The answer, and the knowledge that spread, that Condé had arrived, occasioned general rejoicing and surprise in the army, which greatly needed his presence.

Condé was opposed by Turenne, who now adhered to the court. These two great generals felt that they had a worthy match in each other. Before Condé's presence was generally known, Turenne recognised his influence in an attack that was made; and exclaimed, as he hurried to the spot, "The prince of Condé is arrived!"

Warfare was thus transferred to the immediate neighbourhood of the capital, and intrigues of all kinds varied the more soldierly manœuvres of the contending armies. It is impossible here to detail either the vicissitudes of minor combats, or the artifices of De Retz and the other leaders. Condé found himself forced at last to give way before Turenne. Finding the position he held at St. Cloud do longer tenable, he resolved to take up a new one at Charenton. For this purpose he was obliged to make nearly the circuit of Paris, then held by the duke of Orleans, who considered himself at the head of the Fronde, but who displayed on this, as on every other occasion, his timid and temporising character. As soon as Condé began his march, Turenne became acquainted with it, and pursued him. Condé advanced as far as the suburbs of Paris, and, for a moment, doubted whether he would not ask permission to pass through the city; but, afraid of being refused, he resolved to march on. Danger approaching nearer and gathering thicker, he determined to make a stand in the fauxbourg St. Antoine. Here, therefore, the battle commenced. The combat was hard contested and fierce: it was attended by various changes in the fortune of the day. At one time Condé had been enabled to advance, but he was again driven back to the gates of St. Antoine, where he was not only assailed in front, but had to sustain a tremendous fire carried on from the surrounding houses. Rochefoucauld was at his side: he, and his son, and other nobles dismounted, and sustained the whole attack, without the assistance of the infantry, who refused to aid them. The duke de Nemours received thirteen wounds, and Rochefoucauld was wounded by an arquebuse, just above the eyes, which, in an instant, deprived him of sight; and he was carried off the field by the duke of Beaufort and the prince of Marsillac. They were pursued; but Condé came to their succour, and gave them time to mount. The citizens were averse to opening the gates of the city to the prince's army, fearing that the troops of Turenne would enter with him: its safety, however, entirely depended on taking refuge in Paris. The duke of Orleans, vacillating and dastardly, heard of the peril of his friends, and of the loss they had sustained, and moved no finger to help them. His daughter, mademoiselle de Montpensier, showed a spirit superior to them all. She shamed her father into signing an order for the opening of the gates. She repaired to the Bastille, and turned its cannon on the royal army; and then, going herself to the gate St. Antoine, she not only persuaded the citizens to receive the prince and troops, but to sally out, skirmish with, and drive back their pursuers. Rochefoucauld, seeing the diversion made in their favour, desired to take advantage of it; and, though his eyes were starting from his head through the effects of his wound, he rode to the fauxbourg St. Germain, and exhorted the people to come to Condé's aid. Success crowned these efforts; and the prince, after displaying unexampled conduct and valour, entered Paris with flying colours.

This was the crisis of the war of the Fronde. His success and gallantry had raised Condé high in the affections of the Parisians; but popular favour is proverbially short lived, and, in a very short time, he became the object of hatred. De Retz never slept at the work of intrigue. The court, assisted by Turenne, rallied. A popular tumult ensued, more serious than any that had yet occurred; a massacre was the consequence, and the odium fell on Condé and his party. He lost his power even over his own soldiery, and the utmost license prevailed. Several of the leaders of the Fronde died also. The duke of Nemours fell in a duel with his brother-in-law, the duke of Beaufort: the dukes of Chavigni and Bouillon died of a typhus fever then raging in Paris. Scarcity, the consequence of the presence of the soldiery and the state of the surrounding country, became severely felt. Each party longed for repose. The court acted with discretion. Mazarin was sacrificed for the time; and the royal family returned to Paris, Condé having quitted it shortly before. He hastened to Holland, eager, like a true soldier, to place himself at the head of an army; but ill success pursued him: he was declared a rebel; and, from that hour, his star declined. After much treaty, much intrigue, and various acts of treachery, a peace was concluded between the court and the remnant of the Fronde, and the authority of the king, now declared major, was universally acknowledged.

1653.

Ætat.

40.

On the retreat of Condé from Paris, Rochefoucauld retired with his family to Danvilliers, where he spent a year in retirement; recovering from his wounds; and making up his mind to extricate himself from the web of intrigue in which he had immeshed himself. The Fronde was already at an end: it crumbled to pieces under the influence of fear and corruption. Rochefoucauld had already broken with the prince of Conti and the duchess de Longueville27: his last tie was to Condé. He received representations from his friends, and, doubtless, his own mind suggested the advantage of breaking this last link to an overthrown party. One of the bribes held out to him was the marriage of his son with mademoiselle de la Roche-Guyon, his cousin and an heiress. Desirous of acting honourably, he sent Gourville to Brussels, to disengage him from all ties with Condé. Gourville executed the task with his usual sagacity: he represented to the prince that the duke could no longer be of any service to him; and, having family reasons for wishing to return to France, he asked his consent and permission. The prince admitted his excuses, and freed him from every bond. Gourville then went to Paris, to negotiate the duke's return with cardinal Mazarin. After some difficulty he obtained an interview with the minister, who readily granted leave to the duke to return, and completed his work by gaining over Gourville himself.

Thus ended, as far as any trace remains to us, the active life of a man who hereafter reaped lessons of wisdom from the busy scenes through which he had passed. From various passages in Gourville's memoirs it is evident that he spent the years immediately succeeding to the war on his own estate of la Rochefoucauld. He was nearly ruined by the career he had gone through; and, finding his affairs almost hopelessly deranged, he asked Gourville, who had turned financier, to receive his rents and revenues, and to undertake the management of his estate, household, and debts, allowing him forty pistoles a month for dress and private expenses; which arrangement lasted till his death. Subsequently he lived almost entirely in Paris, where he made a part of what may emphatically be called the best society, of which he was the greatest ornament; and was respected and beloved by a circle of intimate and dear friends. He had always been one of the chief ornaments of the Hotel de Rambouillet. We cannot tell how far he deigned to adopt the jargon of the fair Précieuses; but, as the society assembled there was celebrated as the most intellectual and the most virtuous in Paris, it was an honour for a man to belong to it.

It is singular also to remark, that the most unaffected writers of the time of Louis XIV. had once figured as Alcovistes or Précieuses. Madame de la Fayette, who, in her works, adopted a simplicity of sentiment and expression that contrasts forcibly with the bombast of the school of Scuderi; madame de Sévigné, whose style is the most delightful and easy in the world; Rochefoucauld, who, first among moderns, concentrated his ideas, and, abjuring the diffuseness that still reigned in literature, aimed at expressing his thoughts in as few words as possible, had all been frequenters and favourites at the Hotel de Rambouillet. It would seem that intellectual indolence is the mind's greatest foe; and, once incited to think, persons of talent can easily afterwards renounce a bad school. Platonic gallantries, metaphorical conceits, and ridiculous phraseology, were not the only accomplishments prized by the Précieuses. Learning and wit flourished among them; and when Molière, with happy ridicule, had dissolved the charm that had steeped them in folly, these remained, and shone forth brightly in the persons already named, and others scarcely less celebrated—Ménage, Balzac, Voiture, Bourdaloue, &c.

To return to Rochefoucauld himself. His best and dearest friend was madame de la Fayette, the authoress of "La Princesse de Clèves," and other works that mark her excellent taste and distinguished talents. Madame de la Fayette was, in her youth, a pupil of Ménage and Rapin. She learned Latin under their tuition, and rose above her masters in the quickness of her comprehension. In general society she carefully concealed her acquirements. "She understood Latin," Segrais writes, "but she never allowed her knowledge to appear; so not to excite the jealousy of other women." She was intimately allied to all the clever men of the time, and respected and loved by them. She was a woman of a strong mind; witty and discerning, frank, kind-hearted, and true. Rochefoucauld owed much to her, while she had obligations to him. Their friendship was of mutual benefit. "He gave me intellect," she said, "and I reformed his heart."

This heart might well need reform and cure from all of evil it had communicated with during long years of intrigue and adventure. The easiness of his temper, his turn for gallantry, the mobile nature of his mind, rendered him susceptible to the contamination of the bad passions then so active around him. Ardent, ambitious, subtle,—we find him, in the time of the Fronde, busiest among the intriguers; eager in pursuit of his objects, yet readily turned aside; violent in his hatred, passionate in his attachments, yet easily detached from both, after the first fire had burnt out. His vacillation of conduct and feeling at that time caused it to be said, that he always made a quarrel in the morning, and the employment of his day was to make it up by evening. Cardinal de Retz, his great enemy, accuses him or thinking too ill of human nature.28 Thrown among the fools, knaves, and demoralised women of the Fronde, we cannot wonder that he, seeing the extent of the evil of which human nature is capable, was unaware that these very passions, regulated by moral principle and religion, would animate men to virtue as well as to vice. He read this lesson subsequently in his own heart, when, turning from the libertine society with which he spent his youth, he became the friend of madame de la Fayette, madame de Sévigné, and the most distinguished persons of the reign of Louis XIV. Yet the taint could not quite be effaced. It left his heart, but it blotted his understanding. He could feel generous, noble, and pious sentiments; but having once experienced emotions the reverse of these, and having found them deep-rooted in others, he fancied that both virtue and vice, good and evil, sprang from the same causes, and were based on the same foundations. Added to this, we may observe that his best friends belonged to a court. True and just as was madame de la Fayette,—amiable and disinterested as madame de Sévigné,—brave as Turenne,—noble as Condé,—pious as Racine,—honest as Boileau,—devout and moral as madame de Maintenon might be, and were, the taint of a court was spread over all; the desire of being well with the sovereign, and making a monarch's favour the cynosure of hearts and the measure of merit. Rochefoucauld fancied that he could discern selfishness in all; yet, had he turned his eye inward with a clearer view, he had surely found that the impulses that caused his own heart to warm with friendship and virtue, were based on a power of forgetting self in extraneous objects; for he was a faithful, affectionate, and disinterested friend, a fond father, and an honourable man. He was brave also; though madame de Maintenon tells us that he was accustomed to say that he looked on personal bravery as folly. This speech lets us into much of the secret recesses of his mind. His philosophy was epicurean; and, wanting the stoic exaltation of sentiment, and worship of good for good's sake, he mistook the principles of the human mind, and saw no excellence in a forgetfulness of self, the capacity for which he was thus led to deny.29 Madame de Maintenon adds, in her portrait, "M. de Rochefoucauld had an agreeable countenance, a dignified manner, much intellect, and little knowledge. He was intriguing, supple, foreseeing. I never knew a friend more constant, more frank, nor more prudent in his advice. He loved to reign: he was very brave. He preserved the vivacity of his mind till his death; and was always lively and agreeable, though naturally serious."

1680.

Ætat.

67.

The latter part of his life was embittered by the gout, which seldom left him free from pain. The society of madame de la Fayette and other friends were his resource during the intervals of his attacks, and his comfort throughout. Madame de Sévigné makes frequent mention of him in her letters, and always in a way that marks approbation and respect. She often speaks of his fortitude in suffering bodily pain, and his sensibility when domestic misfortunes visited him severely. His courage never abandoned him, except when death deprived him of those he loved. One of his sons was killed and another wounded in the passage of the Rhine. "I have seen," writes madame de Sévigné, "his heart laid bare by this cruel disaster. He is the first among all the men I ever knew for courage, goodness, tenderness, and sense. I count his wit and agreeable qualities as nothing in comparison." It is from her letters that we gather an account of his death. Mention is made of him, as well and enjoying society, in the month of February. On the 13th of March she writes, "M. de la Rochefoucauld has been and is seriously ill. He is better to-day; but there is every appearance of death: he has a high fever, an oppression, a suppressed gout. There has been question of the English doctor and other physicians: he has chosen his godfather; and frère Ange will kill him, if God has thus disposed. M. de Marsillac is expected: madame de la Fayette is deeply afflicted." On the 15th of the same month she writes, "I fear that this time we shall lose M. de la Rochefoucauld: his fever continues. He received the communion yesterday. He is in a state worthy of admiration. He is excellently disposed with regard to his conscience,—that is clear: for the rest, it is to him as if his neighbour were ill: he is neither moved nor troubled. He hears the cause of the physicians pleaded before him with an unembarrassed head, and almost without deigning to give his opinion. It reminded me of the verse,

Trop dessous de lui, pour y prêter l'esprit.

He did not see madame de la Fayette yesterday, because she wept, and he was to take the sacrament: he sent at noon to inquire after her. Believe me that he has not made reflections all his life to no purpose. He has in this manner approached so near to the last moments that their actual presence has nothing new nor strange for him. M. de Marsillac arrived at midnight, the day before yesterday, overwhelmed with grief. He was long before he could command his countenance and manner. He entered at last, and found his father in his chair, little different from his usual appearance. As M. de Marsillac is his friend among his children, there must have been some internal emotion; but he manifested none, and forgot to speak to him of his illness. I am continually with madame de la Fayette, who could never have experienced the delights of friendship and affection were she less afflicted than she is." On the 17th of March the scene closed; and madame de Sévigné writes, "M. de la Rochefoucauld died this night. My head is so full of this misfortune, and of the extreme affliction of my poor friend, that I must write about it. On Saturday, yesterday, the remedies had done wonders; victory was proclaimed; his fever had diminished. In this state, yesterday, at six o'clock, he turned to death: fever recurred; and, in a word, gout treacherously strangled him: and, although he was still strong, and had not been weakened by losing blood, five or six hours sufficed to carry him off. At midnight he expired in the arms of M. de Condom (Bossuet). M. de Marsillac never quitted him for a moment: he is plunged in inexpressible affliction. Yet he will return to his former life; find the king and the court as they were; and his family will still be around him. But where will madame de la Fayette find such a friend, such society; a similar kindness, resource, and reliance, or equal consideration for herself and her son? She is infirm; she is always at home, and cannot run about town. M. de la Rochefoucauld was sedentary. This state rendered them necessary to each other and nothing could equal their mutual confidence, and the charm of their friendship." This grief, this friendship, is the most honourable monument a man can receive: who would not desire thus to be sepultured in the heart of one loved and valued? One might regret the pain felt; but, as madame de la Sévigné so beautifully observes, this pain is the proof of the truth and warmth of the affection that united them, and the pleasure they mutually imparted and received. In successive letters there are traces of the inconsolable affliction of madame de la Fayette. "She has fallen from the clouds: every moment she perceives the loss she has suffered;" and again, "Poor madame de la Fayette knows not what to do with herself. The loss of M. de la Rochefoucauld makes so terrible a void in her life that she feels more sensibly the value of so delightful an intimacy. Every one will be consoled at last, except her." A sadder testimonial of her affection is contained in a short passage, saying, "I saw madame de la Fayette. I found her in tears: a writing of M. de la Rochefoucauld had fallen into her hands which surprised and afflicted her." We are not told the subject of this paper, nor the cause of her affliction: was it some trace of past unkindness or secret injustice? These are the stings, this the poison, of death. There is no recall for a hasty word; no excuse, no pardon, no forgetfulness, for injustice or neglect;—the grave that has closed over the living form, and blocked up the future, causes the past to be indelible; and, as human weakness for ever errs, here it finds the punishment of its errors. While we love, let us ever remember that the loved one may die,—that we ourselves may die. Let all be true and open, let all he faithful and single-hearted, or the poison-harvest reaped after death may infect with pain and agony one's life of memory. We may say, in defence of Rochefoucauld, that Gourville, in his memoirs, alludes to a circumstance that annoyed him with regard to madame de la Fayette: he says that, taking advantage of Gourville's attachment to his former master, she and M. de Langlade plotted together to do him an ill turn, which would have turned greatly to the lady's advantage; and that, at the time of the duke's death, it was said that he was much hurt at having discovered this little intrigue. At the same time madame de la Fayette may have been innocent of the charge. Gourville disliked her, and might accuse her unjustly, and have deceived Rochefoucauld by representations which were false, though he believed in them himself.

We have entered thus fully into all the details known of Rochefoucauld's life, that we might understand better on what principles and feelings the "Maxims" were founded. We find a warm heart, an impetuous temper, joined to great ductility, some insincerity, and no imagination we find a penetrating understanding, joined to extreme subtlety, that might well overshoot itself in its aim;—strong attachments, which took the colour greatly of their object. Disease tamed his passions; but his mind was still free to observe, and to form opinions. The result was an Epicurean philosophy, which answered the cui bono by a perpetual reference to self—to pleasure and to pain; while he passed over the first principle of morals, which is, that it is not the pleasure we receive from good actions which actuates us, but love of good. This passion produces pleasure or pain in its result; but the latter is the effect forgotten till it arrives; the former the cause, the impelling motive, the true source, from which our virtues spring. Were we to praise a knife for being sharp, and a stander-by should say, "It deserves no praise. No wonder that it is sharp: it is made of the finest tempered steel, and infinite labour has been bestowed on the manufacture of it:" should we not reply, "Therefore we praise it: because the material is good, and has been rendered better by care, we consider it excellent." The passions and the affections, by their influence over the soul, produce pleasure or pain; but shall we not love and approve those who take pleasure in cultivating virtuous affections, and rejecting vicious ones? Thus considered, it may be said that the question is reduced to a mere war of words; but in practice it is not so. No person could habitually entertain the idea that he was selfish in all he did without weakening his love of good, and, at last, persuading himself to make self-interest, in a confined and evil sense, the aim of his actions; while if, on the contrary, we recognise and appreciate that faculty of the soul, that permits us to forget self in the object of our desire, we shall be more eagerly bent to entertain piety, virtue, and honour, as objects to be attained; satisfied that thus we render ourselves better beings, though, probably, not happier than those of meaner aspirations.

We turn to Rochefoucauld's maxims, and find ample field for explanation of our view in the observations that they suggest. We cannot turn to them without discussing inwardly their truth and falsehood. Some are true as truth: such as—

"There is in the human heart a perpetual generation of passions; so that the destruction of one is almost always the birth of another."

"We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears."

"No one is either so happy or so unhappy as he imagines."

"Fortune turns every thing to the advantage of those whom she favours."

"There is but one true love; but there are a thousand copies."

"It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them."

"A fool has not stuff enough in him to be virtuous."

"Our minds are more indolent than our bodies."

"Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it."

"It would seem that nature has concealed talents and capacities in the depths of our minds of which we have no knowledge: the passions alone can bring these into day, and give us more certain and perfect views than art can afford."

"We arrive quite new at the different ages of life; and often want experience in spite of the number of years we have lived."

"It is being truly virtuous to be willing to be always exposed to the view of the virtuous."

Some maxims are too subtle; and among such is to be ranked the celebrated one, "That we often find something in the misfortunes of our best friends that is not displeasing to us." Taking this in its most obvious sense it merely means, that no evil is so great but that some good accompanies it. Our own personal misfortunes even bring, at times, some sort of compensation, without which they would be intolerable. Regarded more narrowly, it appears that Rochefoucauld meant that we are ready to look upon the sorrows of our friends as something advantageous to ourselves. This, in a precise sense, is totally false, where there is question of real affection and true friendship. There is an emotion, however, of a singular description that does often arise in the heart on hearing bad news. The simple-minded Lavater, in his journal, was aware of this. He mentions that, on hearing that a friend had fallen into affliction, he felt an involuntary emotion of pleasure. Examination explains to us the real nature of this feeling. The human mind is adverse (we talk of the generality of instances, not of exceptions,) to repose: any thing that gives it hope of exercise, and puts it in motion, is pleasurable. The consciousness of existence is a pleasure; and any novelty of sensation that is not personally painful brings this. When Lavater heard that his friend was in affliction he was roused from the monotony of his daily life. Novelty had charms: he had to tell his wife to set out on a journey for the purpose of seeing and consoling his friend. All this made him conscious of existence, gave him the hope of being useful, caused his blood to flow more freely, and thus even imparted physical pleasure; and, indeed, I should be apt to reduce the essence of this emotion to mere physical sensation, occasioned by an accelerated pulsation, the result of excitement. It may be, and it is, right to record this sensation in any history of the human mind; but it ought to be appreciated at its true value as the mere operation of the lower part of our nature for the most part, and, added to that, pleasure in the expectation of being of use.

This sort of anatomy of mind, when we detect evil in the involuntary impulses of the soul, resembles the scruples felt by an over-pious person, who regards the satisfying hunger and receiving pleasure in eating a dry crust as sin. Dissecting things thus, it becomes difficult to say what is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to lose one's child; so natural and instinctive is the sorrow that ensues that, perhaps, no other can be purer. If a friend lose a child, if we loved that child also, the misfortune becomes our own, and our sympathy may be perfect. If the child promised ill, the pain we feel from our friend's grief may be mitigated by the sense that it is ill-founded, and even that we may derive benefit from the loss lamented: not being blinded by parental passion, we may rejoice in the alleviations foresight and reason present to us. To call this selfishness is to quarrel with the structure of human nature, which is based on personal identity and consciousness. Passion enables us to throw off even these, sometimes, and totally to amalgamate our interests with those of another. But this is, indeed, of rare occurrence.

We may remark, also, that even in those instances in which the mind does recognise benefit to arise from the misfortune of a friend, and feel involuntary self-gratulation, we regard this as a crime or a vice, and reject it as such, showing the power of disinterestedness over selfishness by dismissing and abhorring the feeling.

The Fronde was the soil in which the "Maxims" had root: better times softened their harshness, and inspired better and higher thoughts. But the younger life of Rochefoucauld was spent in a society demoralised to a degree unknown before—when self-interest was acknowledged as the principle of all; and the affections alone kept a "few green spots"—rare oases of beauty and virtue—amidst the blighted and barren waste of ambition and vice. Usually public revulsions give birth to heroism as well as crime; and war and massacre are elevated and redeemed by courage and self-devotion. But, in the time of the Fronde, there were no very great crimes, and no exalted actions: vice and folly, restless desire of power, and an eager, yet aimless, party spirit, animated society. Hence the mean opinion Rochefoucauld formed of human nature; and the very subtlety and penetration of his intellect occasioned him to err yet more widely in his conclusions. To adopt a maxim of his own, he erred, not by not reaching the mark, but going beyond it. Not that he went so far as his followers. Dry Scotch metaphysicians, men without souls, reduced to a system what he announced merely as of frequent occurrence. They tell us that self-interest is the mover of all our actions: Rochefoucauld only says "self-interest puts to use every sort of virtue and vice." But he does not say that every sort of virtue, or even vice, in all persons is impregnated with self-interest, though with many it is; and there are a multitude of his remarks which display a thorough appreciation of excellence. The maxims themselves are admirably expressed; the language is pure and elegant; the thoughts clearly conceived, and forcibly worded.

Besides the maxims, Rochefoucauld wrote memoirs of various periods of the regency of Anne of Austria and the wars of the Fronde. Bayle bestows great encomium on this work: "I am sure," he says, "there are few partisans of antiquity who will not set a higher value on the duke de la Rochefoucauld's memoirs than on Cæsar's commentaries."30 To which remark the only reply must be, that Bayle was better able to dissect motives, appreciate actions, and reason on truth and falsehood, than to discover the merit of a literary work. "Rochefoucauld's memoirs are still read:" such is Voltaire's notice, while he bestows great praise on the maxims. The chief fault of the memoirs is the subject of them,—the wars of the Fronde,—a period of history distinguished by no men of exalted excellence; neither adorned by admirable actions nor conducing to any amelioration in the state of society: it was a war of knaves (not fools) for their own advancement, ending in their deserved defeat.

20. Mémoires de Gourville.

21. Mémoires de la Regence d'Anne d'Autriche, par le duc de la Rochefoucauld.

22. It is well known that the history of the troubles of the Fronde is recounted by a variety of eye-witnesses, no two of which agree in their account of motives—scarcely of facts. Cardinal de Retz, in his memoirs, gives a somewhat different account of the adhesion of madame de Longueville to his party. It is singular to remark how each person in his relation makes himself the prime mover. Rochefoucauld makes us to almost understand that he drew over the princess to the Fronde. The cardinal tells us that, seeing madame de Longueville one day by chance, he conceived a hope, soon realised, of bringing her over to his party. He tells us that at that time M. de la Rochefoucauld was attached to her. He was living at Poitou; but came to Paris about three weeks afterwards; and thus Rochefoucauld and De Retz were brought together. The former had been accused of deserting his party, which rendered De Retz at first disinclined to join with him; but these accusations were unfounded, and necessity brought them much together. The cardinal allows that madame de Longueville had no natural love for politics,—she was too indolent;—anger, arising from her elder brother's treatment, first led her to wish to oppose his party; gallantry led her onward; and this causing party spirit to be but the second of her motives, instead of being a heroine, she became an adventuress.

23. Rochefoucauld's Mémoires; Mémoires de Gourville; James's Life and Times of Louis XIV.

24. Mémoires du duc de Rochefoucauld.

25. Cardinal de Retz relates a scene in which he spoke disparagingly of Rochefoucauld. He supposes that this was reported to the duke: "I know not whether this was the case," he says; "but I could never discover any other cause for the first hatred that M. de la Rochefoucauld conceived against me."

26. Cardinal de Retz, in describing this scene, declares that Rochefoucauld called out to Coligny and Recousse to kill De Retz, as he held him pinned in the doorway: they refused; while a partisan of the coadjutor came to his aid, and, representing that it was a shame and a horror to commit such an assassination, Rochefoucauld allowed the door to open. Joly relates the occurrence in the same manner; and, although a little softened in expression, the duke's account does not materially differ.

27. The couplet, written by Rochefoucauld at the bottom of a portrait of the duchess de Longueville is well known.

"Pour mériter son cœur, pour plaire à ses beaux yeux,

J'ai fait la guerre aux rois: je l'aurois faite aux dieux."

When he quarrelled with her, after his wound in the combat of the fauxbourg de St. Antoine, he parodied it.

"Pour ce cœur inconstant, qu'enfin je connois mieux,

J'ai fait la guerre aux rois; j'en ai perdu les yeux."

It may here be mentioned, that the prince of Conti and the duchess of Longueville held out in Bordeaux and Guienne against the royal authority for several years. Through the interposition of Gourville they acceded to terms in 1658. The conclusion of madame de Longueville's life was singular. Cardinal de Retz and Rochefoucauld both describe her as naturally indolent; but they both so inoculated her with a love of party intrigue, that, when the war of the Fronde ceased, she found it impossible to reconcile herself to a quiet life. She became jansenist. She built herself a dwelling close to the abbey of Port Royal aux Champs. She put herself forward in all the disputes, and was looked up to with reverence by the leaders of the party, and contrived, when every one else had failed, to suspend the disturbances caused by the formula. "A singular woman," the French biographer writes, "who even became renowned while working out her salvation, and saved herself on the same plank from hell and from ennui." Her piety was sincere, for she submitted to great personal privations, and fasted so strictly, that she died, it is said, from inanition. She died about a month after the duke de la Rochefoucauld. The bishop of Autun preached her funeral oration, as madame de Sévigné says, with all the ability, tact, and grace that it was possible to conceive. The children and friends of Rochefoucauld were among his audience, and wept his death anew.

28. "Il y a toujours eût du je ne sais quoi en tout M. de la Rochefoucauld. Il a voulu se mêler d'intrigues dès son enfance, et en un temps où il ne sentait pas les petits intérêts, qui n'ont jamais été son faible, et où il ne connoissait pas les grands, qui, d'un autre sens, n'ont pas été son tort. Il n'a jamais été capable d'aucune affaire, et je ne sais pourquoi; car il avait des qualités qui eussent suplié, en tout autre celles qu'il n'avait pas. Sa vue n'était pas assez étendue, et il ne voyait pas même tout ensemble ce qui était à sa portée; mais son bon sens, très bon dans la speculation, joint à sa douceur, à son insinuation, et à sa facilité de mœurs, qui est admirable, devait recompenser plus qu'il n'a fait le défaut de sa pénétration. Il a toujours eût une irrésolution habituelle; mais je ne sais même à quoi attribuer cette irrésolution: elle n'a pu venir en lui de la fécondité de son imagination, qui est rien moins que vive. Je ne puis la donner à la stérilité de son jugement, car quoiqu'il ne l'ait pas exquis dans l'action, il à un bon fonds de raison. Nous voyons l'effect de cette irrésolution, quoique nous n'en connaissons pas la cause. Il n'a jamais été guérier, quoiqu'il fut très soldat. Il n'a jamais été par lui même bon courtisan, quoiqu'il ait eût toujours bonne intention de l'être. Il n'a jamais été bon homme de parti, quoique toute sa vie il y ait été engagé. Cet air de honte et de timidité que vous lui voyez dans la vie civile s'était tourné dans les affaires en air d'apologie. Il croyait toujours en avoir besoin, ce qui jointes a ses maximes, qui ne marquent pas assez de foi à la vertu, et à sa pratique, qui a toujours été à sortir des affaires avec autant d'impatience qu'il y est entré, me fait conclure qu'il eut beaucoup mieux fait de se connaître et de se réduire à passer, comme il eût pu, pour le courtisan le plus poli et pour le plus honnête homme, à l'égard de la vie commune, qui eût paru dans le siècle."

Such is the character de Retz gives of his rival. Madame de Sévigné has preserved a portrait of the cardinal by Rochefoucauld. He gives him high praise for good understanding and an admirable memory. He represents him as high minded, and yet more vain than ambitious; an easy temper, ready to listen to the complaints of his followers; indolent to excess, when allowed to repose, but equal to any exertion when called into action; and aided on all occasions by a presence of mind which enabled him to turn every chance so much to his advantage that it seemed as if each had been foreseen and desired by him. He relates that he was fond of narrating his past adventures; and his reputation was founded chiefly on his ability in placing his very defects in a good light. He even regards his last retreat as resulting from vanity, while his friend, madame de Sévigné, more justly looks upon it as resulting from the grandeur of his mind and love of justice.

29. We doubt the exact truth of these assertions even while we write them. It is true that Rochefoucauld detects self-love as mingling in many of our actions and feelings, but he does not advance the opinion that no disinterested virtue can exist, and, still less, the Helvetian metaphysical notion that self-love is the spring of every emotion, which it is, inasmuch as it is we that feel, and that our emotions cause our pulses to beat, not another's; but is not, inasmuch as we do not consult our own interest or pleasure in all we feel and do. Madame de Sévigné relates an anecdote of an officer who had his arm carried off by the same cannon-ball that killed Turenne, but who, careless of the mutilation, threw himself weeping on the corpse of the hero. She adds that Rochefoucauld shed tears when he heard this told. Such tears are a tribute paid to disinterested virtue; and prove, though the author of the "Maxims" could trace dross in ore wherever it existed, yet that he believed that virtue could be found in entire purity.

30. Bayle's Dictionary, article Cæsar.