and small coin of maxims,
which were a sort of subscription money there. Many of them have an
epigrammatical piquancy, which was just the thing to charm a circle of
vivacious and intelligent women: they seem to come from a La
Rochefoucauld who has been dipped over again in philosophy and wit, and
received a new layer. But whether or not Madame de Sable's influence
served to enrich the _Pensees_ of Pascal, it is clear that but for her
influence the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld would never have existed.
Just as in some circles the effort is, who shall make the best puns
(_horibile dictu_!), or the best charades, in the _salon_ of Port Royal
the amusement was to fabricate maxims. La Rochefoucauld said, "L'envie
de faire des maximes se gagne comme la rhume." So far from claiming for
himself the initiation of this form of writing, he accuses Jacques
Esprit, another _habitue_ of Madame de Sable's _salon_, of having excited
in him the taste for maxims, in order to trouble his repose. The said
Esprit was an academician, and had been a frequenter of the Hotel de
Rambouillet. He had already published "Maxims in Verse," and he
subsequently produced a book called "La Faussete des Vertus Humaines,"
which seems to consist of Rochefoucauldism become flat with an infusion
of sour Calvinism. Nevertheless, La Rochefoucauld seems to have prized
him, to have appealed to his judgment, and to have concocted maxims with
him, which he afterward begs him to submit to Madame Sable. He sends a
little batch of maxims to her himself, and asks for an equivalent in the
shape of good eatables: "Voila tout ce que j'ai de maximes; mais comme je
ne donne rien pour rien, je vous demande un potage aux carottes, un
ragout de mouton," etc. The taste and the talent enhanced each other;
until, at last, La Rochefoucauld began to be conscious of his
pre-eminence in the circle of maxim-mongers, and thought of a wider
audience. Thus grew up the famous "Maxims," about which little need be
said. Every at once is now convinced, or professes to be convinced,
that, as to form, they are perfect, and that as to matter, they are at
once undeniably true and miserably false; true as applied to that
condition of human nature in which the selfish instincts are still
dominant, false if taken as a representation of all the elements and
possibilities of human nature. We think La Rochefoucauld himself wavered
as to their universality, and that this wavering is indicate