I was
at an age (24) at which one loves to do extravagant and startling
things, and I felt that nothing could be more startling or more
extravagant than to snatch at the same time the Queen from the King
her husband, and from the Cardinal de Richelieu who was jealous, and
Mlle d'Hautefort from the King who was in love with her."
He tells the story with inimitable gusto. But he tells it just as an
episode, and he hurries on to the death of Richelieu in 1642, as
though he were conscious that up to his thirtieth year his own life
had not been of much consequence.
Even in that age of turbulent extravagance, the Prince of Marcillac
was known, where he was known at all, merely as a hare-brained youth
who carried the intolerance and insolence of amatory youth past the
confines of absurdity, and it is amusing to find Balzac, who was
twenty years his senior, and who was buried in the country, describing
him--surely by repute--as the type of--
"These gentlemen who chatter so much about the empire and about the
sovereignty of ladies, and have their heads so stuffed with tales and
strange adventures, that they grow to believe that they can do all
that was done under the reign of Amadis, and that the least of their
duties is to reply to a supplicating lady, I, who am only a man, how
should I resist the prayer of her to whom the Gods themselves can
refuse nothing?"
We seem far from the sombre and mordant author of the "Maximes," but
a complete apprehension of the character of La Rochefoucauld requires
the story of his adventures to be at least briefly indicated.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35