[451] If the Abbé de Choisy (see page [205], note 426) ever told La Bruyère how he was brought up, as he mentions in his Mémoires, there can be no doubt he was the original of Lucilius.
[452] In the original, il se fait de fête; an expression also used by other authors in La Bruyèreʼs time.
[453] Theophilus is generally believed to have been the Abbé Roquette (1623-1707), Bishop of Autun, the supposed prototype of Molièreʼs Tartuffe, and, according to Saint-Simon, “a man all sugar and honey, and mixed up in every intrigue.” The “great man ... scarcely set foot on shore” was James II. of England, who came to France in 1689, two years before the above paragraph was published. The Abbé Roquetteʼs character seems not so black as it has been painted, at least according to M. J. Henri Pignotʼs Life of him, published in 1876.
[454] Compare in the chapter “Of Personal Merit,” § 33.
[455] Telephon, an odd name now, is said to be a portrait of François dʼAubusson (1625-1691), Count de la Feuillade, Duke de Rouanez, and Marshal of France, who at his cost erected a bronze monument to the glory of Louis XIV. on the Place des Victoires in Paris, where it still stands.
[456] Davus is a certain Prudhomme, a proprietor of bath-and wash-houses, with whom M. de la Feuillade lodged before he became a favourite, in whom he had always the greatest confidence, and whose daughter he is supposed to have married after the death of his first wife.
[457] It is even now usual for strict Roman Catholics abroad to celebrate the day of the saint after which they are named, instead of the day on which they are born.
[458] Rinaldo is the Achilles of the Christian army in Tassoʼs “Jerusalem Delivered,” and the rival of Orlando in Ariostoʼs “Orlando Furioso;” the second is the true hero of the latter poem, the third the friend and companion of Orlando, and the fourth the greatest of the Christian warriors except Rinaldo, in Tassoʼs poem, already mentioned.
[459] Among the great there were such names as Tancrède de Rohan, Hercule de Fleury, Achille de Harlay, Phébus de Foix, Cyrus de Brion, etc.; even citizens took grand classical or romantic names.
[460] The original has côteaux, most probably because some noblemen only drank certain wines which grew on some hill-slopes, called côteaux in French.