ucauld. He has always ever since his childhood wanted to be
taking part in some plot, and that at a time when he was indifferent
to small interests, which have never been his weakness, and when he
had no experience of great ones, which, in another sense, have never
been his strong point. He has never had any skill in conducting
business, and I don't know why; for he possessed qualities which in
any other man would have made up for those which he lacked. He was not
longsighted enough, and he did not see as a whole even what was within
his range of vision. But his good sense--which in the field of
speculation was very good--joined to his gentleness, his insinuating
charm, and his admirable ease of manner, ought to have compensated,
more than they have done, for his defect of penetration. He has always
suffered from an habitual irresoluteness; but I do not know to what
this irresoluteness should be attributed. He has never been a warrior,
though very much a soldier. He has never, through his own effort,
succeeded in being a good courtier, though he has always intended to
be one. That air of bashfulness and of shyness which you observe in
him in social life has given him in matters of business an apologetic
air. He has always fancied that he needed to apologize; and this--in
conjunction with his 'Maximes,' which do not err on the side of too
much faith in virtue, and with his practice, which has always been to
wind up business as impatiently as he started it--makes me conclude
that he would have done much better to know himself, and to be content
to pass, as he might well have passed, for the most polished courtier
and the finest gentleman, in private life, which this age has
produced."

We are now beginning to see the real author of the "Maximes," when, at
the age of forty, he begins to peep forth from the travesty of his
aristocratic violence and idleness. Whether the transformation would
have been gradual instead of sudden is what can never be decided, but
we date it from July 2, 1652, when he was dangerously wounded in a
riot in the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the Picpus barricade, where he
was shot in the forehead and, as it at first appeared, blinded for
life. According to the faithful Gourville, when La Rochefoucauld
thought he would lose his eyesight, he had a picture of Madame de
Longueville engraved with two lines under it from a fashionable
tragedy, the "Alcyonee" of Duryer--

_That I might hold her heart and