t they can do all
that was done under the reign of Amadis, and that the least of their
duties is to reply to a supplicating lady, I, who am only a man, how
should I resist the prayer of her to whom the Gods themselves can
refuse nothing?"

We seem far from the sombre and mordant author of the "Maximes," but
a complete apprehension of the character of La Rochefoucauld requires
the story of his adventures to be at least briefly indicated. A chasm
divides his early from his late history, and this chasm is bridged
over in a very shadowy way by such records as we possess of his
retirement after the Fronde.

Between the death of Richelieu and this retirement there lies a period
of ten years, during which the future author of the "Maximes" is
swallowed up in the hurly-burly of the worst moment in the whole
history of France. It is difficult from any point of view to form what
it would be mere waste of time for us to attempt in this connection, a
clear conception of the chaos into which that country was plunged by
the weakness of Anne of Austria and the criminality of Mazarin. The
senseless intrigues of the Fronde affect the bewildered student of
those times as though

_this frame
Of Heav'n were falling and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn
The steadfast earth._

At first La Rochefoucauld seems to have meant to support the cause of
the court, expecting to be rewarded for what he had done, or been
prepared to do for the Queen. He says in his "Memoires" that after the
death of Louis XIII. the Queen-Mother "gave me many marks of
friendship and confidence; she assured me several times that her
honour was involved in my being pleased with her, and that nothing in
the kingdom was large enough to reward me for what I had done in her
service." That sounds very well, but what it really illustrates is the
extraordinary violence of aristocratic frivolity, the fierce levity
and insatiable frenzied vanity of the noble families. The aims of La
Rochefoucauld, in support of which he was ready to sacrifice his
country, were of a class that must seem to us now petty in the
extreme. He wanted the _tabouret_, the footstool, for his duchess, in
other words the right to be seated in presence of the members of the
royal family. He wanted the privilege of driving into the courtyard of
the Louvre without having to descend from his coach outside and walk
in. He demanded these honours beca