e of the literature of his country than was the idlest of the
cut-throat nobility who swaggered in and out of the courtyard of the
Louvre.

His "Memoires" end with an account of the war in Guienne in 1651 which
is more solemn and more detached than all the rest. No one would
suspect that the historian, who affects the gravity of a Tacitus, was
acting all through the events he describes with the levity of a
full-blooded and unscrupulous schoolboy. The most amazing instance of
this is his grotesque attempt to have Cardinal de Retz murdered at the
Palais de Justice. In the course of a sort of romping fray he caught
Retz's head between the flaps of a folding door, and shouted to
Coligny to come and stab him from behind. But he himself was shoved
away, and the Cardinal released. La Rochefoucauld admits the escapade,
without any sign of embarrassment, merely observing that Retz would
have done as much by him if he had only had the chance. But now comes
the incident which, better than anything else could, illustrates the
feverish and incongruous atmosphere of the Fronde, and the difficulty
of following the caprices of its leading figures. The very next day
after this attempt to assassinate Retz in a peculiarly disgraceful
way, La Rochefoucauld met the Cardinal driving through the streets of
Paris in his coach. Kneeling in the street, he demanded and received
the episcopal benediction of the man whom he had tried to murder in an
undignified scuffle a few hours before. No animosity seems to have
persisted between these two princes of the realm of France, and this
may be the moment to introduce the picture which Cardinal de Retz,
whose head was held in the folding door, painted very soon after of
the volatile duke who had held him there to be stabbed from behind.
Both writers began their memoirs in 1652, and no one has ever decided
which is the more elegant of the two unique conpositions. The
conjunction between two of the greatest prose-writers of France is
piquant, and we cannot trace in Retz's sketch of his antagonist the
smallest sign of resentment. It was not published until 1717, but it
has all the appearance of having been written sixty years earlier, at
least, when Mademoiselle was seized with the fortunate inspiration of
having "portraits" written of, and often by, the celebrated personages
of the day. This, then, is how Retz saw La Rochefoucauld--

"There has always been a certain _je ne sais quoi_ in M. de La
Rochefo