But I also hold that one
should confine one's self to professions of pity and be very careful
not to feel any. Pity is a passion which is wholly useless to a
well-constituted mind; it can but weaken the heart, and it ought to be
left to people who, carrying nothing out in a logical manner, require
passion to constrain them to do things."
He seems to paint himself in tones of Prussian blue, but we must
really think of him as of a man timid, and at the same time
preternaturally wide-awake, who was determined at all risks not to be
taken at a disadvantage. When he was an old man, when much communing
with Mme de La Fayette had allayed his suspicion of mankind, La
Rochefoucauld said to Mlle de Scudery, "I hope that clemency will come
into fashion, and that we shall see no more men unhappy." [4] He
professed to found politeness on extreme _amour-propre_, but perhaps
in a still closer analysis he would have discovered its basis in
kindness of heart. He resists the temptation to weaken his own
pessimism, just as in his biting sarcasms about love we may trace a
tender soul still bleeding from the wounds which Mme de Longueville's
levity had inflicted on it.
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