anguage of France a vehicle which could transfer from brain to brain
the subtlest ingenuities of psychology. He is a typical specimen of the
Frenchman of letters at the moment when literature had become the ally
of political power and the instrument of social influence. Into this
new world, before it had completely developed, the future author of
the "Maximes" was introduced at a very early age. He was presented to
the wits and _precieuses_ of the Hotel Rambouillet at the age of
eighteen. It is amusing to think that he may have seen Voiture, in the
Blue Room, seize his lute and sing a Spanish song, or have volunteered
as a paladin in the train of Hector, King of Georgia. But the
pedantries and affectations of this wonderful society seem to have
made no immediate impression upon La Rochefoucauld, whose early years
were those of the young nobleman devoid of all apparent intellectual
curiosity. It is true that he says of himself that directly he came
back from Italy (this was in 1629, when he was only sixteen), "I began
to notice with some attention whatever I saw," but this was, no doubt,
external; he does not exhibit in his writings, and in all probability
did not feel, the slightest interest in the pedantic literature of the
end of Louis XIII.'s reign. He represented, through his youth, the
purely military and aristocratic element in the society of that age.
If he had died when he was thirty, or at the close of the career of
Richelieu, nothing would have distinguished him from the mob of
violent noblemen who made the streets of Paris a pandemonium.

To understand the influence of La Rochefoucauld it is even more
needful than in most similar cases to form a clear idea of his
character, and this can only be obtained by an outline of his
remarkable career. Francois VI. Duke of La Rochefoucauld, as a typical
Parisian, was born in the ducal palace in the rue des Petits-Champs,
on September 15, 1613. The family was one of the most noble not merely
in France but in Europe, and we do not begin to understand the author
until we realize his excessive pride of birth. In a letter he wrote to
Cardinal Mazarin in 1648 he says, "I am in a position to prove that
for three hundred years the monarchs [of France] have not disdained to
treat us as members of their family." This arrogance of race inspired
the early part of his life to the exclusion, so far as we can
perceive, of any other stimulus to action. He was content to be the
violent