ou un beau calice; il la contemple, il
l'admire; Dieu et la nature sont en tout cela ce qu'il n'admire
point! il ne va pas plus loin que l'oignon de sa tulipe, qu'il ne
livrerait pas pour mille ecus, et qu'il donnera pour rien quand les
tulipes seront neligees et que les oeillets auront prevalu. Cet
homme raisonnable qui a une ame, qui a un culte et une religion,
revient chez soi fatigue affame, mais fort content de sa journee:
il a vu des tulipes.

_Les Caracteres_ is the title of La Bruyere's book; but its
sub-title--'Les Moeurs de ce Siecle'--gives a juster notion of its
contents. The whole of society, as it appeared to the subtle and
penetrating gaze of La Bruyere, flows through its pages. In them,
Versailles rises before us, less in its outward form than in its
spiritual content--its secret, essential self. And the judgement which
La Bruyere passes on this vision is one of withering scorn. His
criticism is more convincing than La Rochefoucauld's because it is based
upon a wider and a deeper foundation. The vanity which _he_ saw around
him was indeed the vanity of the Preacher--the emptiness, the
insignificance, the unprofitableness, of worldly things. There was
nothing too small to escape his terrible attention, and nothing too
large. His arraignment passes from the use of rouge to the use of
torture, from the hypocrisies of false devotion to the silly absurdities
of eccentrics, from the inhumanity of princes to the little habits of
fools. The passage in which he describes the celebration of Mass in the
Chapel of Versailles, where all the courtiers were to be seen turning
their faces to the king's throne and their backs to the altar of God,
shows a spirit different indeed from that of Bossuet--a spirit not far
removed from the undermining criticism of the eighteenth century itself.
Yet La Bruyere was not a social reformer nor a political theorist: he
was simply a moralist and an observer. He saw in a flash the condition
of the French peasants--

Certains animaux farouches, des males et des femelles, repandus par
la campagne, noirs, livides, et tout brules du soleil, attaches a
la terre qu'ils fouillent et qu'ils remuent avec une opiniatrete
invincible; ils out comme une voix articulee, et, quand ils se
levent sur leurs pieds, ils montrent une face humaine: et en effet
ils sont des hommes--

saw the dreadful fact, noted it with all the intensity of