oking out for a Wife.--Saint-Simon's Court
Life.--The History of Louise de la Valliere.--A mean Act of
Louis Quatorze.--All has passed away.--Saint-Simon's Memoirs of
His Own Time.

The precursor of Saint-Simon, the model of Lord Chesterfield, this
ornament of his age, belonged, as well as Saint-Simon, to that state of
society in France which was characterised--as Lord John Russell, in his
'Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans,' tells us--by an idolatry of power
and station. 'God would not condemn a person of that rank,' was the
exclamation of a lady of the old _regime_, on hearing, that a notorious
sinner, 'Pair de France,' and one knows not what else, had gone to his
account impenitent and unabsolved; and though the sentiment may strike
us as profane, it was, doubtless, genuine.

Rank, however was often adorned by accomplishments which, like an
exemption from rules of conduct, it almost claimed as a privilege.
Good-breeding was a science in France; natural to a peasant, even, it
was studied as an epitome of all the social virtues. '_N'etre pas poli_'
was the sum total of all dispraise: a man could only recover from it by
splendid valour or rare gifts; a woman could not hope to rise out of
that Slough of Despond to which good-breeding never came. We were behind
all the arts of civilization in England, as Francois de Rochefoucault
(we give the orthography of the present day) was in his cradle. This
brilliant personage, who combined the wit and the moralist, the courtier
and the soldier, the man of literary tastes and the sentimentalist _par
excellence_, was born in 1613. In addition to his hereditary title of
duc, he had the empty honour, as Saint-Simon calls it, of being Prince
de Marsillac, a designation which was lost in that of _De la
Rochefoucault_--so famous even to the present day. As he presented
himself at the court of the regency, over which Anne of Austria
nominally presided, no youth there was more distinguished for his
elegance or for the fame of his exploits during the wars of the Fronde
than this youthful scion of an illustrious house. Endowed by nature with
a pleasing countenance, and, what was far more important in that
fastidious region, an air of dignity, he displayed wonderful
contradictions in his character and bearing. He had, says Madame de
Maintenon, '_beaucoup d'esprit, et peu de savoir_;' an expressive
phrase. 'He was,' she adds, 'pliant in nature, intriguing, and
cautious;'