red a lucrative sinecure, that of
treasurer of finances at Caen in Normandy. He hated the country and
went down to Caen on the rarest occasions possible. La Bruyere, a
Parisian to the marrow of his bones, says, "Provincials and fools are
always ready to lose their temper and believe that one is laughing at
them or despising them. You must never venture on a joke, even the
mildest, except with well-bred, witty people." Perhaps he had been
trying Godefroi de La Bruyere off on the stolid inhabitants of Caen.
He received a salary, however, which was far from being all paid away
to a substitute, and he rose, in the curious social scale of those
days, from Mister (_roturier_) into Esquire (_ecuyer_). The court in
Normandy was extremely angry with him at periodical intervals, but
apparently could do nothing to assert itself. When it raged, La
Bruyere was like the East in Matthew Arnold's poem, he "bow'd low
before the blast in patient, deep disdain."

He lived through these quiet years in one apartment after another in
the heart of Paris. Vigneul de Marville saw him "nearer heaven than
earth" in a room which a light curtain divided into two. "The wind,
always at the service of philosophers, running ahead of visitors,
would lift this curtain adroitly, and reveal the philosopher, smiling
with pleasure at the opportunity of distilling the elixir of his
meditations into the brain and the heart of a listener." He was always
at work, but his work was confined to meditation, talk and study.
Sometimes he left his garret, and studied "the court and the town"
from the benches of the public gardens, the Luxembourg and the
Tuileries. There has been an enormous amount of speculation and
conjecture about the central period of the life of La Bruyere, but we
really have only one positive document to go upon. During the illness
of his own footman, he borrowed the services of his brother's man, who
robbed him of money and clothes. La Bruyere put the case in the hands
of the police, who failed to catch the thief. This is the only
definite fact which has rewarded the patience of the investigators,
and we must build round it what we can. We build round it his own
glimpse of self-portraiture (in "Des Biens de Fortune") and find the
philosopher bending over the volume where Plato discusses the
spirituality of the soul, or measuring, with a rapt expression, the
infinite distance between Saturn and Jupiter.[12]

[Footnote 12: "Vigneul de Marvil