Christopher. It is only of late years that this fact has been
discovered, and there are still immense blanks in the life of La
Bruyere during which he disappears from us altogether, engulfed in the
lanes of the Cite, not because of any adventurous mystery, but simply
because of his total lack of adventure. There has scarcely lived a
great man of letters in comparatively recent times about whose life
there is so little to relate as about that of La Bruyere. He is
believed to have gone to school to the Fathers of the Oratory, but
even that is not certain. His knowledge of Greek is thought to prove
it, but, though the Oratorians were admirable Hellenists, surely Greek
could be learned elsewhere.
When he was twenty, he passed his examination in law in Orleans, and,
coming back to Paris, practised as a lawyer for eight or nine years.
He was concerned in no famous case, it is supposed, since his name is
never mentioned in the gossip of the time. He inherited a competence
from his father, and probably lived an idle life, diversified by a
little legal business of a very mediocre nature. As his biographer
says, he grew more and more "inclined by his temperament to a
meditative existence.
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