A chasm
divides his early from his late history, and this chasm is bridged
over in a very shadowy way by such records as we possess of his
retirement after the Fronde.
Between the death of Richelieu and this retirement there lies a period
of ten years, during which the future author of the "Maximes" is
swallowed up in the hurly-burly of the worst moment in the whole
history of France. It is difficult from any point of view to form what
it would be mere waste of time for us to attempt in this connection, a
clear conception of the chaos into which that country was plunged by
the weakness of Anne of Austria and the criminality of Mazarin. The
senseless intrigues of the Fronde affect the bewildered student of
those times as though
_this frame
Of Heav'n were falling and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn
The steadfast earth._
At first La Rochefoucauld seems to have meant to support the cause of
the court, expecting to be rewarded for what he had done, or been
prepared to do for the Queen. He says in his "Memoires" that after the
death of Louis XIII.
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