, is not to do nothing, but to
be sole judge of what one shall do or not do. In this sense, what a
boon is liberty!" This practical freedom he possessed to the full,
when in August 1684 he accepted bondage to a spiteful monkey of a boy,
a dwarf with a huge head and a dreadful face, to whom he was to
impart, with tears of disappointment and humiliation, the rudiments of
national history. He was immediately responsible to the father of this
infant phenomenon, to Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose "useless
talents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and
others," Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of
our delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless
plaything of this "unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband,
detestable master, pernicious neighbour, without affection, without
friends."

But after two centuries of canonization of the Condes, it has now
become the fashion to denigrate them to an equal excess. The
traditional figure of the Grand Conde, Olympian and sublime, has been
exposed by pitiless documentary evidence. La Bruyere's latest and most
learned editor, M. Emile Magne, gives a terrible picture of the
Prince's meanness and dirtiness; Harpagon in an ostler's jacket, he
calls him, _en souquenille_. But to dwell on all this is to forget
that the great Conde, even in his ugly old age, was haloed by the
glory of having been the first soldier of the world. It was a
privilege, even at the end, to be admitted to his intimacy, and I
believe that we pity La Bruyere more than he pitied himself. It
scandalizes the biographers that the Prince, on one occasion, made La
Bruyere dance a _pas seul_ before him, twanging a tune on the guitar.
I suppose De Quincey would have been complaisant if the Duke of
Wellington had asked him to whistle "Home, Sweet Home" to him. There
is a limit, after all, to the modern theory of the Dignity of Letters.

Valincourt says that "All the time La Bruyere lived in the House of
Conde, everybody was always making fun of him." Possibly the fear of
appearing pedantic among all these people of fashion and these
tinselled flunkeys made him lend himself to ridicule. They all teased
and mocked him, I suppose, but not, I think, so as seriously to hurt
him, and now, with his book in our hands, the laugh is on his side.
For when we examine carefully we see that his position in the House of
Conde improved as time went on. He got rid of his riv