argues at once from
all the great French moralists who preceded him, from La Rochefoucauld
with his savage cynicism, from Pascal with his contempt of the natural
man. Vauvenargues rejected the idea which had so tormented the great
spirits of the seventeenth century, that the noblest life was a life
of mortification, and he made no demand on the soul to divorce itself
from all human interests as being things naturally vile and
ignominious. He was to come down to us waving an olive-branch, the
most amiable of all idealists, an apostle of tolerance. He says that
he "hated scorn of human things." To this we must presently return,
but we may pause to note it here, as a faint light thrown over the
obscurity of his adolescence.

The Marquis of Mirabeau was the cousin of Vauvenargues and almost
exactly his coeval. The discovery of a packet of letters which passed
between the young men from the summer of 1737 to that of 1740 has
dissipated in some measure the otherwise total darkness which had
gathered around the youth of our philosopher. Mirabeau (who was to be
the father of the famous orator) was a man of talent, but violent,
chimerical and lawless, "farouche," as he himself put it. Later he was
the author of the redoubtable "Ami des Hommes." This prodigal uncle of
the Revolution, this dangerous and violent "physiocrate" as he called
himself, would seem divided, as pole from pole, from the
gently-reasoning, the benevolently-meditative Vauvenargues.
Nevertheless, they are seen in warm relation of friendship to each
other, and the letters exhibit their characteristics. Mirabeau
shamelessly pours out the catalogue of his shifting and venal loves,
in confidences which Vauvenargues invariably receives with discretion,
unupbraiding, but not volunteering any like confidence in his turn. A
single example must be quoted: Mirabeau, wishing to get rid of a
mistress of whom he is tired, but who is still devoted to him, writes
her a letter of the most studied insolence, cleverly turned, and sends
a copy of it, with infinite fatuity, to his friend. Vauvenargues
replies that he has read out this letter at dinner to his
fellow-officers, who have been greatly diverted by its wit. "But,"
said Vauvenargues, "we are sorry" (that is to say, of course,
Vauvenargues is sorry) "for the poor girl, who shows intelligence, and
who loves you." Could anything be a more indulgent, or at the same
time a more definite reproof? The germ of the _Reflexions_ i