d in the
qualified form of some of the maxims; it occasionally struck him that the
shadow of virtue must have a substance, but he had never grasped that
substance--it had never been present to his consciousness.

It is curious to see La Rochefoucauld's nervous anxiety about presenting
himself before the public as an author; far from rushing into print, he
stole into it, and felt his way by asking private opinions. Through
Madame de Sable he sent manuscript copies to various persons of taste and
talent, both men and women, and many of the written opinions which he
received in reply are still in existence. The women generally find the
maxims distasteful, but the men write approvingly. These men, however,
are for the most part ecclesiastics, who decry human nature that they may
exalt divine grace. The coincidence between Augustinianism or Calvinism,
with its doctrine of human corruption, and the hard cynicism of the
maxims, presents itself in quite a piquant form in some of the laudatory
opinions on La Rochefoucauld. One writer says: "On ne pourroit faire une
instruction plus propre a un catechumene pour convertir a Dieu son esprit
et sa volonte . . . Quand il n'y auroit que cet escrit au monde et
l'Evangile je voudrois etre chretien. L'un m'apprendroit a connoistre
mes miseres, et l'autre a implorer mon liberateur." Madame de Maintenon
tends word to La Rochefoucauld, after the publication of his work, that
the "Book of Job" and the "Maxims" are her only reading.

That Madame de Sable herself had a tolerably just idea of La
Rochefoucauld's character, as well as of his maxims, may be gathered not
only from the fact that her own maxims are as full of the confidence in
human goodness which La Rochefoucauld wants, as they are empty of the
style which he possesses, but also from a letter in which she replies to
the criticisms of Madame de Schomberg. "The author," she says, "derived
the maxim on indolence from his own disposition, for never was there so
great an indolence as his, and I think that his heart, inert as it is,
owes this defect as much to his idleness as his will. It has never
permitted him to do the least action for others; and I think that, amid
all his great desires and great hopes, he is sometimes indolent even on
his own behalf." Still she must have felt a hearty interest in the
"Maxims," as in some degree her foster-child, and she must also have had
considerable affection for the author, who was lovab