Yet it is quite certain that it is widely
disseminated among those of our neighbours who are most prompt and
effective in action, and whose vigour is in no degree paralysed by the
clairvoyance with which they seek for exact truth even in the most
romantic and illusive spiritual circumstances. To throw light on this
aspect of French character, I propose to call attention to a little
book, which is probably well-known to my readers already, but which
may be regarded from a point of view, as I venture to think, more
instructive than that which is usually chosen.
In the year 1665 there appeared anonymously in Paris, in all the
circumstances of well-advertised secrecy, a thin volume of "Maximes,"
which were understood to have exercised for years past the best
thoughts of a certain illustrious nobleman. Mme de Sable, who was not
foreign to the facts, immediately wrote a review, intended for the
_Journal des Scavants_, in the course of which she said that the new
book was "a treatise on movements of the human heart which may be said
to have remained until now unrecognized." The book, as every one
knows, was the work of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, and the subject
of it was an unmasking of "the veritable condition of man.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26