eaders into subjection to his thought; while, La Bruyere says, "for
my part I am quite willing that my reader should say sometimes that I
have not observed correctly, provided that he himself will observe
better." The reader, on the other hand, must not be taken in by all
this, which is very characteristic of La Bruyere's timid
self-confidence. His reputation loses nothing by our discovering that
he owes much to Montaigne and still more to La Rochefoucauld.

The link is clear, in spite of the foliage with which La Bruyere seeks
to conceal it. It could only be from La Rochefoucauld that the author
of "Les Caracteres" derived that sad disillusionment, lighted up by
flashes of savage wit, with which he expresses his sense of the
defects of human character. It may often be noted that when La Bruyere
speaks of egotism, of the prevalence of _amour-propre_, his pungent
phrases have the very sound of those of his precursor. The truth is
that a strong new book is not read by a young man whose genius is
prepared for its teaching, without its image being stamped upon his
mind. La Bruyere's own experience had already offered to him a banquet
of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when he
met with the "Maximes" of 1665. His conscience and his memory were
prepared, and the truth is that a great deal of La Rochefoucauld's
teaching passed into his veins without his knowing it. This does not
in the least undermine the reputation which justly belongs to La
Bruyere as one of the most original writers of France, or even of
Europe, but it links him for our intelligence with the other great
moralist of his century.

The author of the "Maximes" was the head of one of the great princely
houses of France. The author of the "Caracteres" was the type of the
plebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the
quintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyere is not less a specimen of the
middle class. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his
own joke about his ancestry. He wrote, "I warn everybody whom it may
concern, in order that the world may be prepared and nobody be
surprised, that if ever it should happen that one of the mighty of the
earth should deem me worthy of his care, in other words if I should
ever come into an immense fortune, there is a Godefroi de La Bruyere
whom all the chroniclers place in the list of the greatest nobles of
France who followed Godefroi de Bouillon to the conquest of the Holy