then, at once that the
_amour-propre_ of the seventeenth century, the sentiment against which
we saw the most burning arrows of La Rochefoucauld directed, was not
the source of Vauvenargues' desire of glory; that with him renown was
not a matter of egotistic satisfaction, but of altruistic stimulus,
awakening in others, by a happy rivalry, sentiments of generosity and
self-sacrifice which might redeem society and the dying world of
France. And this may perhaps at this point be observed as the centre
of his action, namely the discovery that a wholesome desire for fame
proceeds not from our self-satisfaction, but from our profound sense
of emptiness, of imperfection.

How needful the lesson was, no one who examines the social history of
the first half of the eighteenth century can doubt. Without falling
into errors of a Puritanic kind, we cannot fail to see that opinion
and action alike had become soft, irresolute, superficial; that strong
views of duty and piety and justice were half indulged in, half
sneered at, and not at all acted upon. The great theologians who
surrounded Bossuet, the Eagle of Meaux, had died one by one, and had
left successors who were partly pagan, partly atheist. Art and
literature tripped after the flowered skirts of the emancipated
Duchess of Maine. Looking round the world of France in 1746,
Vauvenargues could but cry, like a preacher in the wilderness, "we
have fallen into decadence, into moral desuetude," but he cried
without anger, remembering that "still the love of _gloire_ is the
invisible soul of all those who are capable of any virtue."

It was a critical moment in the history of France. After the long and
painful wars of Louis XIV. the army had become unpopular; it was the
fashion to sneer at it. The common soldiers were considered, and often
were, the offscourings of the community. The officers, who had left
their homes too soon, in most cases, to acquire the rudiments of
education, were bored with garrison life, and regretted Paris, which
they made every excuse to regain. They affected to have no curiosity
about military science, and to talk "army shop" was the worst of bad
form. Those who were poor lived and grumbled in their squalor; those
who were rich gave themselves up to sinful extravagance. There was no
instinctive patriotism in any section of the troops. What pleasure can
a man have in being a soldier if he possesses neither talent for war,
nor the esteem of his men, nor a