and unexpected in
some of the sayings upon passion:

"The Passions are the only Orators that are always successful
in persuading."

"It is not in the Power of any the most crafty Dissimulation
to conceal Love long where it really is, nor to counterfeit it
long where it is not."

"Love pure and untainted with any other Passions (if such
a Thing there be) lies hidden in the Bottom of our Heart, so
exceedingly close that we scarcely know it ourselves."

"The more passionately a Man loves his Mistress, the readier
he is to hate her." (Compare Catullus's "Odi et amo.")

"The same Resolution which helps to resist Love, helps to
make it more violent and lasting too. People of unsettled
Minds are always driven about with Passions, but never absolutely
filled with any."

No one who knew Rochefoucauld only by reputation would guess such
sentences to be his. They reveal "the man differing from himself"; or,
rather, perhaps, they reveal the true nature, that usually put on a thin
but protective armour of cynicism when it appeared before the world.
Here we see the inward being of the man who, twice in his life, was
overwhelmed by that "violent and lasting passion," and was driven by it
into strange and dangerous courses where self-love was no guide. But to
quote more would induce the peculiar weariness that maxims always
bring--the weariness that comes of scattered, disconnected, and abstract
thought, no matter how wise. "Give us instances," we cry. "Show us the
thing in the warmth of flesh and blood." Nor will we any longer be put
off by pillules from seeking the abundance of life's great feast.

XXXIII

THE LAST FENCE

He was riding May Dolly, a Cheshire six-year-old, and one of his own
breeding; for just as some people think that everyone should go to his
own parish church, it was a principle with Mr. James Tomkinson that a
man should ride a horse from his own county. Straight, lithe, and ruddy,
he trotted to the starting-post, and the crowd cheered him as he went,
for they liked to see a bit of pluck. He modestly enjoyed their
applause: "I think I never saw anybody so pleased," said Mr. Justice
Grantham, who was judge in the race. It was known that the old man had
passed the limit of seventy, but only five years before he won a
steeplechase on his own, and if ever a rider fulfilled Montaigne's ideal
of a life spent in the saddle, it was he. So he rode to the
starting-post, happy i