ising, extending and weighing
it. He was one of those timid men who surprise us by their crafty
intrepidity. It was dangerous to publish sarcastic "portraits" of
well-known influential people, and there are few of these in the first
edition, but when the success of the book was once confirmed these
were made more and more prominent. It was not until the eighth
edition, of 1694, that La Bruyere ventured to print the following
study of one of the most influential men of letters of that day.
Fontenelle--

THE PORTRAIT OF CYDIAS

"Ascange is a sculptor, Hegion a bronze-founder; AEschine a fuller, and
Cydias a wit--that is his profession. He has a signboard, a workshop,
finished articles for sale, mechanics who work under him. He cannot
deliver for more than a month the stanzas which he has promised you,
unless he breaks his word to Dosithee, who has ordered an elegy from
him. He has an idyl on the loom; it is for Crantor, who is hurrying
him, and from whom he expects a handsome price. Prose, verse, which do
you want? He is equally successful with either. Ask him for letters to
sympathize with a bereavement or to explain an absence, and he will
undertake them. If you want them ready-made, you have only to enter
his shop, and to choose what you like. He has a friend whose only duty
upon this earth is to promise Cydias a long time ahead to a certain
set of people, and then to present him at last in their houses as a
man of rare and exquisite conversation; and, there, just as a musician
sings or a lute-player touches his lute before the people who have
engaged him, Cydias, after having coughed, and lifted the ruffle from
his wrist, stretched out his hand and opened his fingers, begins to
retail his quintessential thoughts and his sophistical arguments....
He opens his mouth only to contradict. 'It seems to me,' he gracefully
says, 'that the truth is exactly the contrary of what you say,' or 'I
cannot agree with your opinion,' or even 'that used to be my
prepossession, as it is yours, but now----!'"

The idol of the gossips, "the prettiest pedant in the world," was thus
paid out for his intrigues against La Bruyere in the French
Academy.[13]

[Footnote 13: The contemporary "keys," which were generally
ill-informed and ill-forming, said that Cydias was
Perrault. But it is almost certain that Fontenelle was
meant. M.A. Chassang has brought together a formidable list
of Fontenelle's activity. He wrote