ad just bought a post in the Treasury
(_tresorier de France_) at Caen, when Bossuet, who knew him, induced him
to remove to Paris as teacher of history to the duke, grandson of the
great Conde. He remained forever attached to the person of the prince,
who gave him a thousand crowns a year, and he lived to the day of his
death at Conde's house. "He was a philosopher," says Abbe d'Olivet in
his _Histoire de l'Academie Francaise;_ "all he dreamt of was a quiet
life, with his friends and his books, making a good choice of both; not
courting or avoiding pleasure; ever inclined for moderate fun, and with
a talent for setting it going; polished in manners, and discreet in
conversation; dreading every sort of ambition, even that of displaying
wit." This was not quite the opinion formed by Boileau of La Bruyere.
"Maximilian came to see me at Auteuil," writes Boileau to Racine on the
19th of May, 1687, the very year in which the _Caracteres_ was published;
"he read me some of his _Theophrastus_. He is a very worthy (_honnete_)
man, and one who would lack nothing, if nature had created him as
agreeable as he is anxious to be. However, he has wit, learning, and
merit." Amidst his many and various portraits, La Bruyere has drawn his
own with an amiable pride. "I go to your door, Ctesiphon; the need I
have of you hurries me from my bed and from my room. Would to Heaven I
were neither your client nor your bore. Your slaves tell me that you are
engaged and cannot see me for a full hour yet; I return before the time
they appointed, and they tell me that you have gone out. What can you be
doing, Ctesiphon, in that remotest part of your rooms, of so laborious a
kind as to prevent you from seeing me? You are filing some bills, you
are comparing a register; you are signing your name, you are putting the
flourish. I had but one thing to ask you, and you had but one word to
reply: yes or no. Do you want to be singular? Render service to those
who are dependent upon you, you will be more so by that behavior than by
not letting yourself be seen. O man of importance and overwhelmed with
business, who in your turn have need of my offices, come into the
solitude of my closet; the philosopher is accessible; I shall not put you
off to another day. You will find me over those works of Plato which
treat of the immortality of the soul and its distinctness from the body;
or with pen in hand, to calculate the distances of Saturn and Jupiter.