ence, a Carthusian friar, when his religious
director advised marriage instead. He humbly did as he was told, and
united himself to the daughter of a treasurer for France, of Amiens, by
whom he had seven children. It was only at the request of Madame de
Maintenon that he wrote 'Esther' for the convent of St. Cyr, where it
was first acted.

His death was the result of his benevolent, sensitive nature. Having
drawn up an excellent paper on the miseries of the people, he gave it to
Madame de Maintenon to read it to the king. Louis, in a transport of
ill-humour, said, 'What! does he suppose because he is a poet that he
ought to be minister of state?' Racine is said to have been so wounded
by this speech that he was attacked by a fever and died. His decease
took place in 1699, nineteen years after that of La Rochefoucault, who
died in 1680.

Amongst the circle whom La Rochefoucault loved to assemble were
Boileau--Despreaux, and Madame de Sevigne--the one whose wit and the
other whose grace completed the delights of that salon. A life so
prosperous as La Rochefoucault's had but one cloud--the death of his son
who was killed during the passage of the French troops over the Rhine.
We attach to the character of this accomplished man the charms of wit;
we may also add the higher attractions of sensibility. Notwithstanding
the worldly and selfish character which is breathed forth in his 'Maxims
and Reflections,' there lay at the bottom of his heart true piety.
Struck by the death of a neighbour, this sentiment seems even on the
point of being expressed; but, adds Madame de Sevigne, and her phrase is
untranslatable, '_il n'est pas effleure_.'

All has passed away! the _Fronde_ has become a memory, not a realized
idea. Old people shake their heads, and talk of Richelieu; of his
gorgeous palace at Rueil, with its lake and its prison thereon, and its
mysterious dungeons, and its avenues of chestnuts, and its fine statues;
and of its cardinal, smiling, whilst the worm that never dieth is eating
into his very heart; a seared conscience, and playing the fine gentleman
to fine ladies in a rich stole, and with much garniture of costly lace:
whilst beneath all is the hair shirt, that type of penitence and
sanctity which he ever wore as a salvo against all that passion and
ambition that almost burst the beating heart beneath that hair shirt.
Richelieu has gone to his fathers. Mazarin comes on the scene; the wily,
grasping Italian. He too