triguer he was noisy and petulant, but on the whole anything but
great. The Fronde left behind it a sense of littleness, of
poverty-stricken humanity, and this particular frondeur had seen the
mask drop from the features of his fellow-men. Now, in the quiet of the
country, in disgrace with fortune and his own conscience, he grasped a
new and this time a dignified and suitable ambition. He began to study
reality and learned to distinguish truth from pretence. This study was
to make him one of the most eminent of French authors and a great power
in the purification of French intelligence. He began, doubtless, his
career as an author by composing the "Memoires," in which he embodied
his exasperations and his recriminations in language of studied
dignity. There is little here which betrays the future moralist, except
the simplicity and almost colourless transparency of the style.

As containing nearly the sole certain evidence of La Rochefoucauld's
state of mind at the time of transition, it is well, perhaps, to speak
at this moment of his letters, which were first brought together in
1881. They extend from 1637 to 1677, and the biographer pores over
them in the hope of extracting from them some crumbs of information.
But to the general reader they cannot be recommended. They are seldom
confidential, the writer never lets himself go. Even to his later
friends, such as Mme de Sable, La Rochefoucauld is rarely familiar,
and the impression of himself in these graceful and sometimes vigorous
epistles is illusive; the writer seems for ever on his guard. The
great mass of this correspondence, in which politics takes no part
after 1653, is singularly literary; it is mainly occupied with the
interests, and almost with the jargon, of the professional author. We
are told that his affectation in society was to appear cold and
unmoved, and this he certainly contrived to do in those of his letters
which have been preserved.

La Rochefoucauld told Mme de Sable that he depended on her for his
knowledge of the inmost windings of the human heart. When he returned
to Paris, this lady was approaching the age of sixty. Her _salon_
competed with that of the Hotel de Rambouillet and that of Mlle de
Montpensier at the Luxembourg. The Marquise de Sable had been gay in
her youth, but when her young lover, Armentieres, was killed in a
duel, she turned devout. She also turned hypochondriacal and literary.
According to Tallemont des Reaux, who has le