The truth is
that a strong new book is not read by a young man whose genius is
prepared for its teaching, without its image being stamped upon his
mind. La Bruyere's own experience had already offered to him a banquet
of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when he
met with the "Maximes" of 1665. His conscience and his memory were
prepared, and the truth is that a great deal of La Rochefoucauld's
teaching passed into his veins without his knowing it. This does not
in the least undermine the reputation which justly belongs to La
Bruyere as one of the most original writers of France, or even of
Europe, but it links him for our intelligence with the other great
moralist of his century.
The author of the "Maximes" was the head of one of the great princely
houses of France. The author of the "Caracteres" was the type of the
plebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the
quintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyere is not less a specimen of the
middle class. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his
own joke about his ancestry. He wrote, "I warn everybody whom it may
concern, in order that the world may be prepared and nobody be
surprised, that if ever it should happen that one of the mighty of the
earth should deem me worthy of his care, in other words if I should
ever come into an immense fortune, there is a Godefroi de La Bruyere
whom all the chroniclers place in the list of the greatest nobles of
France who followed Godefroi de Bouillon to the conquest of the Holy
Land.
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