And the last sentence in the book is this: “If these Caractères of mine are not relished I shall be surprised; and if they are I shall be equally so.”
There is a pose in that; but it is a literary pose.
He did not live long to enjoy his academic dignity. He made but one appearance at the table, and then supported the candidature of somebody whose name was not before the assembly. His proposal was of Dacier the classic, but he owned that he should prefer to see Madame Dacier chosen. On the 10th of May 1696, just a month after Madame de Sévigné, he died of apoplexy at Versailles. He had rooms in the Chateau opening on to the leads—bedroom, book-closet, and dressing-room. The inventory of his effects shows him to have been possessed of some three hundred books. Very few of his letters exist: one to Ménage about Theophrastus, one to Bussy, thanking him for his vote and sending him the sixth edition of Les Caractères, others to Condé, of earlier date, about the progress of his grandson. Two letters to him from Jérôme Phélypeaux, the son of Pontchartrain, survive, which hint at a happy relationship between the scholar and the young blade. Phélypeaux, who was just one-and-twenty, chaffs the philosopher; calls him a “fort joli garçon,” suspects him of being “un des plus rudes joueurs de lansquenet qui soit au monde.” La Bruyère’s solitary letter to his young friend is in a light-hearted vein too, chiefly about the weather.
It is so hot, he says, that yesterday he cooked a cake on his leads, and an excellent cake. To-day it has rained a little. Then he plays the fool very pleasantly. “Whether it will rain to-morrow, or whether it won’t, is a thing, sir, which I could not pronounce if the health of all Europe depended upon it. All the same, I believe, morally speaking, that there will be a little rain; that when that rain shall have ceased it will leave off raining, unless indeed it should begin to rain again.” It is evidence of a sound heart that a learned man can write so to a young friend; and as it is much better to love a man than not, I close upon that frivolous, but happy note. La Bruyère was to live a year more in his attic on the leads. Let us hope that he baked some more cakes and wrote many more letters to young M. Phélypeaux.
COULEUR DE ROSE
Sainte-Beuve, in one of his early Lundis, tells a touching story of Madame de Pompadour, the frail and pretty lady who was forced by circumstances rather than native bent into becoming a Minister of State, and one, at that, who had to measure swords with the great Frederick of Prussia. At one stage of her career she had hopes of a match between a daughter of her married state and a natural son of Louis. There seemed to be the makings of a Duc du Maine in the lad, of a Duchess consequently for her family. And that was the simple objective of those of her faction who favoured the scheme. But her own was simpler still. She spoke her real mind about it to Madame de Hausset, her lady-in-waiting, from whose Mémoires Sainte-Beuve quotes it.
“Un brevet de duc pour mon fils,” she said, “c’est bien peu; et c’est à cause que c’est son fils que je le préfère, ma bonne, à tous les petits ducs de la Cour. Mes petits enfants participeraient en ressemblance du grand-père et de la grand’-mère, et ce mélange que j’ai l’espoir de voir ferait mon bonheur un jour.”
Interesting revelation. “Les larmes lui vinrent aux yeux,” says Madame de Hausset. She was bourgeoise, you see, this poor Pompadour, with the homely instincts, the longing for the snug interior, the home, the family life which characterise the plainly-born. She had been a Mademoiselle Poisson. Poisson indeed! What had a Mademoiselle Poisson to do with a Fils de Saint-Louis, or in a Parc aux Cerfs? Nothing whatever in first intention, at least; rather she was all for love and the world well lost. She had had her dreams, wherein Louis was to be her “jo,” and they were to climb the hill together. The ideal remained with her, for ever unrealised, always, it seemed, just realisable; and her foreign and military adventures, the certain ruin of her country, were so many shifts to arrive—she and Louis together, hand in hand—at some Island of the Blest. No beautiful end will justify means so unbeautiful, but to some extent it excuses them.