When he recovered his health, he devoted himself to society. Madame de Sablé assumed a hold over him. He lived a quiet life, and occupied himself in composing an account of his early life, called his "Memoirs," and his immortal "Maxims."
From the time he ceased to take part in public life, Rochefoucauld's real glory began. Having acted the various parts of soldier, politician, and lover with but small success, he now commenced the part of moralist, by which he is known to the world.
Living in the most brilliant society that France possessed, famous from his writings, distinguished from the part he had taken in public affairs, he formed the centre of one of those remarkable French literary societies, a society which numbered among its members La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau. Among his most attached friends was Madame de La Fayette (the authoress of the "Princess of Cleeves"), and this friendship continued until his death. He was not, however, destined to pass away in that gay society without some troubles. At the passage of the Rhine in 1672 two of his sons were engaged; the one was killed, the other severely wounded. Rochefoucauld was much affected by this, but perhaps still more by the death of the young Duc de Longueville, who perished on the same occasion.
Sainte Beuve says that the cynical book and that young life were the only fruits of the war of the Fronde. Madame de Sévigné, who was with him when he heard the news of the death of so much that was dear to him, says, "I saw his heart laid bare on that cruel occasion, and his courage, his merit, his tenderness, and good sense surpassed all I ever met with. I hold his wit and accomplishments as nothing in comparison." The combined effect of his wounds and the gout caused the last years of Rochefoucauld's life to be spent in great pain. Madame de Sévigné, who was {with} him continually during his last illness, speaks of the fortitude with which he bore his sufferings as something to be admired. Writing to her daughter, she says, "Believe me, it is not for nothing he has moralised all his life; he has thought so often on his last moments that they are nothing new or unfamiliar to him."
In his last illness, the great moralist was attended by the great divine, Bossuet. Whether that matchless eloquence or his own philosophic calm had, in spite of his writings, brought him into the state Madame de Sévigné describes, we know not; but one, or both, contributed to his passing away in a manner that did not disgrace a French noble or a French philosopher. On the 11th March, 1680, he ended his stormy life in peace after so much strife, a loyal subject after so much treason.
One of his friends, Madame Deshoulières, shortly before he died sent him an ode on death, which aptly describes his state— "Oui, soyez alors plus ferme, Que ces vulgaires humains Qui, près de leur dernier terme, De vaines terreurs sont pleins. En sage que rien n'offense, Livrez-vous sans resistance A d'inévitables traits; Et, d'une demarche égale, Passez cette onde fatal Qu'on ne repasse jamais."
Rochefoucauld left behind him only two works, the one, Memoirs of his own time, the other the Maxims. The first described the scenes in which his youth had been spent, and though written in a lively style, and giving faithful pictures of the intrigues and the scandals of the court during Louis XIV.'s minority, yet, except to the historian, has ceased at the present day to be of much interest. It forms, perhaps, the true key to understand the special as opposed to general application of the maxims.
Notwithstanding the assertion of Bayle, that "there are few people so bigoted to antiquity as not to prefer the Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld to the Commentaries of Caesar," or the statement of Voltaire, "that the Memoirs are universally read and the Maxims are learnt by heart," few persons at the present day ever heard of the Memoirs, and the knowledge of most as to the Maxims is confined to that most celebrated of all, though omitted from his last edition, "There is something in the misfortunes of our best friends which does not wholly displease us." Yet it is difficult to assign a cause for this; no book is perhaps oftener unwittingly quoted, none certainly oftener unblushingly pillaged; upon none have so many contradictory opinions been given.
"Few books," says Mr. Hallam, "have been more highly extolled, or more severely blamed, than the maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucauld, and that not only here, but also in France." Rousseau speaks of it as, "a sad and melancholy book," though he goes on to say "it is usually so in youth when we do not like seeing man as he is." Voltaire says of it, in the words above quoted, "One of the works which most contributed to form the taste of the (French) nation, and to give it a spirit of justness and precision, was the collection of the maxims of Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, though there is scarcely more than one truth running through the book—that ‘self-love is the motive of everything'—yet this thought is presented under so many varied aspects that it is nearly always striking. It is not so much a book as it is materials for ornamenting a book. This little collection was read with avidity, it taught people to think, and to comprise their thoughts in a lively, precise, and delicate turn of expression. This was a merit which, before him, no one in Europe had attained since the revival of letters."
Dr. Johnson speaks of it as "the only book written by a man of fashion, of which professed authors need be jealous."