No mention of Mme de Sévigné is made in the inventory of the "Chambre des Sublimes," and yet there is no one to whom we owe an exacter portraiture of its inmates, nor one who was more worthy to animate its golden recesses. For the last ten years of La Rochefoucauld's life she was one of the closest observers of the famous sedentary friendship. Unfortunately she tells us nothing about the original publication of the "Maximes," for his name does not occur in her correspondence before 1668, and does not abound there until 1670. Then we find her for ever at the Duke's house, or meeting him at Mme de La Fayette's bedside. He gratified her by warm and constant praise of Mme de Grignan, whose letters were regularly read to the friends by her infatuated mother. It is vexing that Mme de Sévigné, who might have spared us two or three of her immortal pages, although she incessantly mentions and even quotes La Rochefoucauld, generally refrains from describing him. She and Mme de La Fayette were his guests in the country on May 15, and the three wonderful companions walked in the harmony of "nightingales, hawthorns, lilacs, fountains and fine weather," or played with his pet white mouse. Such touches are rare, and Paris seems best to suit what Mme de Sévigné admirably calls "the grey-brown" thought of La Rochefoucauld.
In 1671 he had a terrible attack of the gout, accompanied by agonies moral and physical which filled the ladies with alarm and pity. Better in 1672, he was able to entertain company to hear Corneille read his new tragedy of "Pulchérie" in January, and Molière his new comedy, "Les Femmes Savantes," in March. He was now, in premature old age, the venerable figure in the group, the benevolent Nestor of the salons. Let his detractors remember that Mme de Sévigné, who knew what she was talking about, wrote that "he is the most lovable man I have ever known," His sufferings, his disenchantments and disappointments, only seemed to accentuate his beautiful patience. Just before his fatal illness (January 31, 1680) Mme de Sévigné writes again: "I have never seen a man so obliging, nor more amiable in his wish to give pleasure by what he says." [9] Her detailed and pathetic account of his last hours, which closed on the night of March 16, 1680, testifies to her deep attachment and to Mme de La Fayette's despair.
[Footnote 9: Two of La Fontaine's fables, "L'Homme et son
Image" and "Les Lapins," were dedicated to La Rochefoucauld
in 1668. In the former we read:—
On voit bien où je veux venir.
Je parle a tous, et cette erreur extrême
Est un mal que chacun se plaît d'entretenir
Notre âme, c'est cet homme amoureux de lui-même;
Tant de miroirs, ce sont les sottises d'autrui,
Miroirs, de nos défauts les peintres légitimes;
Et quant au canal, c'est celui,
Que chacun sait: le livre des Maximes.]
When Mme de Sévigné, in 1675, received the third edition of the Duke's book, which contained more than seventy new maxims, she wrote, "Some of them are divine; some of them, I am ashamed to say, I don't understand." Probably she would have partly agreed with some one's criticism of them, "De l'esprit, encore de l'esprit, et toujours de l'esprit—trop d'esprit!" [10] No doubt, La Rochefoucauld has done his own reputation wrong by the bluster of his scepticism and also by the fact that he sometimes wraps his thoughts up in such a blaze of epigram that we are disconcerted to find, when we analyze them, that they are commonplaces. Contemporaries seemed to have smiled at the excessive subtlety into which their long conversations led Mme de La Fayette and her sublime companion. Mme de Sévigné describes such talks with her delicate irony, and says, "We plunged into subtleties which were beyond our intelligence." An example is the dispute whether "Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind," or "Grace is to the body what delicacy is to the mind" should be the ultimate form of a maxim. They sometimes drew the spider's thread so fine that it became invisible.[11]
[Footnote 10: The practice of making "maxims," axiomata, encouraged the enlivenment of conversation by the introduction of topsy-turvy statements, such as "Constancy is merely inconstancy arrested," in the manner of Oscar Wilde and Mr. Chesterton.]
[Footnote 11: La Rochefoucauld was not without affectations. He spoke airily about his manière négligée of writing, whereas no one ever took more pains. Segrais gives very interesting information on this point: he says that the Duke "sent me from time to time what he had been working on, and he wished me to keep these note-books of his for five or six weeks, so as to be able to give them my closest attention, particularly with regard to the turn of the thoughts and the arrangement of the words. Some of his maxims he altered as many as thirty times." But when he wrote to Esprit, in 1660, La Rochefoucauld affected to regard his own writings as trifles thrown off "au coin de mon feu" The great of the earth have these amiable and amusing weaknesses.]
But his clearness of insight was immense, and he was too profoundly intelligent to be a merely destructive or sterile force. He builded better than he knew. For instance, courage, it has been alleged, he denies, and indeed he is so savage in his exposure of braggadocio that it might well be believed that he refused to admit that men could be brave. Yet what does he say?—
"Intrepidity is an extraordinary force of the soul which lifts it above those troubles, disorders and emotions which the aspect of great peril would otherwise excite; it is by this force that heroes maintain themselves in a state of equanimity, preserving the free use of their reason through the most surprising and the most terrible accidents."
This must include the most moving of all accidents, those which call forth moral and physical courage in the face of national danger, and are rewarded by gloire, by public and lasting fame. And we are led on to a consideration of the lengthy reflection on the spirit in which the approach of death should be faced, with which he closed the latest edition of the "Maximes," declaring that "the splendour of dying with a firm spirit, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave a fair reputation behind us, the assurance of being released from the drudgery of life and of depending no more on the caprices of fortune," are remedies which would medicine our pain in approaching the dreaded goal of our existence.