isplayed his faience and his guitar. He would
glance, for encouragement, at the framed portrait of Bossuet which was
the principal ornament of the wall above it, and then, listening a
moment to be sure that he was safe from disturbance, he would unlock
one of the three drawers, and take out the little portfolio in which
for years and years he had been storing up his observations upon
society and his consolations in affliction. Presently, with infinite
deliberation and most fastidious choice of the faultless phrase and
single available word, he would paint the Holbein portrait of one of
the prodigious creatures whom he had just seen in action, some
erratic, brilliant and hateful "ornament of society" such as the Duke
de Lauzun, and the picture of Straton would be added to his gallery:--

"Straton was born under two stars; unlucky, lucky in the same degree.
His life is a romance: no, for it lacks probability. He has had
beautiful dreams, he has bad ones: what am I saying? people don't
dream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more
than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar
to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum
existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that
can probably be never solved."

La Bruyere aimed at the improvement of human nature. La Rochefoucauld
had said, "Don't be ridiculous--a blatant love of self is the only
spring of your being." Pascal, less haughty but more overwhelming, had
said, "Insect that you are, doomed to damnation, cease to strive
against your own miserable impotence." La Bruyere's teaching was not
so definite, partly because his intellect was not so systematic as
theirs, but partly because he was more human than either, human with
more than a touch of the modern democratic humanity. His attitude was
the easier one implied in the sense that "there is so much that's good
in the worst of us, and so much that's bad in the best of us" that
there is room, even among moralists, for an infinite indulgence. His
was, on the whole, and accounting for some fluttering of the nerves, a
very tranquil spirit. He is much less formal and mechanical than La
Rochefoucauld, and he seems to study men with less dependence on a
theory. His own statement should not be overlooked; he says, very
plainly, that he desired above all things to make men live better
lives.

Boileau said that the style of La Bruyere was "