nervous,
picturesque style is the very image of that little dark, quick, agile
man, more soldier than bishop, and more intriguer than soldier,
faithfully and affectionately beloved by his friends, detested by his
very numerous enemies, and dreaded by many people, for the causticity of
his tongue, long after the troubles of the Fronde had ceased, and he was
reduced to be a wanderer in foreign lands, still Archbishop of Paris
without being able to set foot in it. Having retired to Commercy, he
fell under Louis XIV.'s suspicion. Madame de Sevigne, who was one of his
best friends, was anxious about him. "As to our cardinal, I have often
thought as you," she wrote to her daughter; "but, whether it be that the
enemies are not in a condition to cause fear, or that the friends are not
subject to take alarm, it is certain that there is no commotion. You
show a very proper spirit in being anxious about the welfare of a person
who is so distinguished, and to whom you owe so much affection." "Can I
forget him whom I see everywhere in the story of our misfortunes,"
exclaimed Bossuet, in his funeral oration over Michael Le Tellier,
"that man so faithful to individuals, so formidable to the state, of a
character so high that he could not be esteemed, or feared, or hated by
halves, that steady genius whom, the while he shook the universe, we saw
attracting to himself a dignity which in the end he determined to
relinquish as having been too dearly bought, as he had the courage to
recognize in the place that is the most eminent in Christendom, and as
being, after all, quite incapable of satisfying his desires, so conscious
was he of his mistake and of the emptiness of human greatness? But, so
long as he was bent upon obtaining what he was one day to despise, he
kept everything moving by means of powerful and secret springs, and,
after that all parties were overthrown, he seemed still to uphold himself
alone, and alone to still threaten the victorious favorite with his sad
but fearless gaze." When Bossuet sketched this magnificent portrait of
Mazarin's rival, Cardinal de Retz had been six years dead, in 1679.

Mesdames de Sevigne and de La Fayette were of the court, as were the Duke
of La Rochefoucauld and Cardinal de Retz. La Bruyere lived all his life
rubbing shoulders with the court; he knew it, he described it, but he was
not of it, and could not be of it. Nothing is known of his family. He
was born at Dourdan in 1639, and h