'etait, il avait toute sa vie ete touche de la misere du
peuple et de toutes les vexations qu'il souffrait." This
would be particularly the case when Vauban was writing the
"Projet d'une dixieme royale," finished in 1698.]

La Bruyere was the first effective moralist who realized what a
monstrous disproportion existed between the fortune of the rich and of
the poor.[15] If we read the chapter "Des Biens de Fortune" we may be
astonished at his courage, and we may see in him a direct precursor of
the revolution which took a little more than a hundred years to gather
before it broke on France. He describes the great of the earth with a
savage serenity, and then he adds, "Such people are neither relatives,
nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even men. They
have money." There are many such maxims in the chapter "De l'homme"
which must have set people's thoughts running in channels which had
before been wholly dry. La Bruyere was not a political reformer, and
we must not exaggerate the influence of his charming book in this
particular direction. But, as a popular imaginative writer, he took a
long step in the democratic direction. Frenchmen were already touched
in their consciences and beginning to examine the state of their souls
with anxiety; but the teachers of the ascetic revival had been too
uncompromising. Ordinary mortals could not hope to reach the ascetic
ideal of Port Royal, they could only be discouraged by the savage
attacks on _amour-propre_, while in the "Caracteres" they met with a
lay-preacher who was one of themselves, and who did not disdain to
encourage moral effort.

[Footnote 15: The wonderful passage in which La Bruyere
dwells on the condition of the French peasant of his day
marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the
chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and
female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched
by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir
with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate
speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a
countenance that is human: and in short they are human
beings. They creep back at nightfall into dens, where they
live on black bread, water and roots. They spare the rest of
mankind the trouble of sowing, ploughing and reaping what is
required for food, and accordingly they se