ver his foible, and when he
did not understand great ones, which, on the other hand, were never his
strength. He was never capable of doing anything in public affairs, and
I am sure I don't know why. His views were not sufficiently broad, and
he did not even see comprehensively all that was within his range, but
his good sense,--very good, speculatively,--added to his suavity, his
insinuating style, and his easy manners, which are admirable, ought to
have compensated more than it did for his lack of penetration. He
always showed habitual irresolution, but I really do not know to what to
attribute this irresolution; it could not, with him, have come from the
fertility of his imagination, which is anything but lively. He was
never a warrior, though he was very much the soldier. He was never a
good partyman, though he was engaged in it all his life. That air of
bashfulness and timidity which you see about him in private life was
turned in public life into an air of apology. He always considered
himself to need one, which fact, added to his maxims, which do not show
sufficient belief in virtue, and to his practice, which was always to
get out of affairs with as much impatience as he had shown to get into
them, leads me to conclude that he would have done far better to know
his own place, and reduce himself to passing, as he might have passed,
for the most polite of courtiers and the worthiest (_le plus honnete_)
man, as regards ordinary life, that ever appeared in his century."

[Illustration: La Rochefoucauld and his fair Friends----629]

Cardinal de Retz had more wits, more courage, and more resolution than
the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; he was more ambitious and more bold; he
was, like him, meddlesome, powerless, and dangerous to the state. He
thought himself capable of superseding Cardinal Mazarin, and far more
worthy than he of being premier minister; but every time he found himself
opposed to the able Italian he was beaten. All that he displayed, during
the Fronde, of address, combination, intrigue, and resolution, would
barely have sufficed to preserve his name in history, if he had not
devoted his leisure in his retirement to writing his _Memoires_.
Vigorous, animated, always striking, often amusing, sometimes showing
rare nobleness and high-mindedness, his stories and his portraits
transport us to the very midst of the scenes he desires to describe and
the personages he makes the actors in them. His rapid,