borne, might be; and there would be none to explain to us that
it was the Marquis de Vauvenargues, come home a broken man from the
wars in Bohemia.

This inconspicuous personage, who glided almost like a ghost through
less than thirty-two years of pain and adversity, was not merely the
greatest moralist that France produced in the course of the eighteenth
century, but was of all the world's writers perhaps the one who has
lifted highest the banner of hope and joy in heroism and virtue. In La
Rochefoucauld we encountered a representative of the dominant class,
the prince-dukes. La Bruyere was a typical bourgeois. In our third
example of the moral energy of France we meet with a specimen of the
_petite noblesse_, the impoverished country gentlemen who dragged out
a provincial existence in obscurity and ignorance, supported by their
pride in a long pedigree. Luc de Clapiers, whose father was raised to
the marquisate of Vauvenargues in 1722, was born seven years earlier
than that, at Aix in Provence, where his father was mayor. It is a
pleasant touch to be told that his father was the only magistrate who
did not desert his post when Aix was swept by the plague in 1720.
There seems a foreshadowing here of his famous son's high courage. But
it seems also certain that there was no appreciation of scholarship or
literature in the household. No atmosphere less benevolent to learning
can be imagined. The future philosopher went to school at Aix for a
little while, and then his weak health was made the excuse for
cancelling what was perhaps looked upon as a needless expense. He was
thrown upon himself, and what education he secured was the result of
his own desultory reading.

Vauvenargues never acquired a knowledge of Greek or even Latin,[16] but
when he was about sixteen years of age he came across a book which
absolutely transfigured his outlook upon the world and decided the
course of his aspirations. This was none less than a translation of
the "Lives" of Plutarch, a work which has had a very remarkable moral
effect on the Frenchmen of four centuries. We know not which this
particular translation was, but it would be pleasant to think it was
that made by Amyot in 1559. The effect it had on the temperament of
Vauvenargues must be told in his own words. He says in a letter to
Mirabeau (March 22, 1740)--

[Footnote 16: Suard is definite as to this: "Il est mort
sans etre en etat de lire Horace et Tacite dans leur