Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern . greatstatesmans death in 1642. He was then prominent in effecting areconcilement between the Queen and Conde, that they might leaguetogether against Gaston of Orleans. Cardinal Mazarin, however, wasto thwart his plans as Richelieu had done. From 1642 to 1652 his life was one of confusion and of intrigue,with nothing better to steady it and to direct it than the fascinationsof the Duchesse de Longueville, for whose sake he became a the battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine in 1652, he was shot inthe head; this misfortune in h
Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern . greatstatesmans death in 1642. He was then prominent in effecting areconcilement between the Queen and Conde, that they might leaguetogether against Gaston of Orleans. Cardinal Mazarin, however, wasto thwart his plans as Richelieu had done. From 1642 to 1652 his life was one of confusion and of intrigue,with nothing better to steady it and to direct it than the fascinationsof the Duchesse de Longueville, for whose sake he became a the battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine in 1652, he was shot inthe head; this misfortune in his military career proved to be of mosthappy significance in his career as a man of letters, for it forced himinto that semi-retirement from which issued his famous and The remainder of his life was spent chiefly in Paris,in that brilliant and cultured society of which glimpses are obtainedin the letters of Madame de Sevigne, whose intimate friend he Rochefoucauld — the passionate soldier, the restless gallant, the. LA ROCHEFOUCAILD suave lover — became in his old age the polished ornament of themost exclusive and exacting of Parisian salons. His friendship forMadame de Sevigne, for Madame de Sable, for Madame de La Fayette,mellowed his declining years. He died in 1680. In his (Memoirs he says of himself, <( I have talent, marred bymelancholy; and again, <( I extremely approve of exalted passion: itshows a grandeur of soul. I who know all the delicacy and strengthof the lofty sentiments of love — if I ever love, it will assuredly be-after this fashion; but such as I am, I do not believe that this knowl-edge which I have would ever pass from my head to my heart. The key to Rochefoucaulds character and to his writings mayperhaps be found in these passages. The melancholy of which hespeaks was genuine. It lurks in many of the ( Maxims, as the nat-ural sorrow of one disillusioned by his contact with the world, forcedto acknowledge the gulf between the ideal and t
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