SOURCE: Hope, Quentin M. “La Rochefoucauld and the Vicissitudes of Time.” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 28, no. 54 (2001): 105-20.

[In the following essay, Hope observes that La Rochefoucauld's maxims comment on all stages of life and are keenly aware of the joys and hardships of human existence.]

Many of La Rochefoucauld's best-known and most quoted maxims present themselves as timeless. That hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, that we can all bear the misfortunes of others are observations of human behaviour independent of time and change. These are maxims that apply at all places, in all times, to all men and women. Another substantial group of maxims, and a number of the Réflexions diverses as well, consider man as he is carried along by the flow of time and shaped by its constant succession of random events. (These are maxims that consider man specifically. Whether they speak of the young or the old, the bold or the timid, the wise or the foolish the reference is most usually to man and not to woman.) Some of the maxims look at him as he moves on through the predictable stages and ages of life and is transformed by them. Others measure his response to the unpredictable misfortunes, opportunities, and challenges of life. He is accompanied along his way by the others, les grands, les honnêtes gens, les sots, les habiles, les femmes, “tous les personnages de la comédie humaine.”¹ They are spectators whose admiration he seeks to compel and whose ridicule he fears. Finally, a few maxims consider what happens when, in due time, he tires of the continuing efforts and the strife, or grows too old to keep it up and seeks a refuge of some kind. But true repose is scarcely attainable. He is bound on a journey that will take him from the fever of youth, to the strivings of the middle years, to the decrepitude of old age until he reaches his death, the last act whose blinding terror no one can escape.

THE AGES OF MAN

The journey begins in childhood. But there are no children in the maxims. Other moralistes who train their sights on the failings of mankind have not exempted children. When a boy with a slingshot takes a shot at the poor bedraggled pigeon in “Les Deux Pigeons” La Fontaine reminds his reader of what children are like: “Cet âge est sans pitié.” For Pascal the usurpation of all the earth begins when a child says this is my dog, this is my place in the sun. La Bruyère's series of keen-eyed and sometimes appreciative observations of the life and manners of children, their games, their imagination, and their judgment begins with a withering enumeration of their faults of character and behaviour, their instability, cruelty, mendacity, and laziness that builds up to a terse, wryly misanthropic conclusion: “Ils sont déjà des hommes.”² No one would argue that La Rochefoucauld's view of human behaviour is less acid and sharp than La Bruyère's. Why then are there no maxims about the cruelty, possessiveness, or acquisitiveness of children? One reason is that La Rochefoucauld simply does not agree that they are “déjà des hommes.” They are not yet like their elders, and that in itself is pleasing.

“La plupart des petits enfants plaisent.” That brief assertion in “De l'Air et des manières” (RD [réflexion diverse] III) has none of the provocative, ironic, teasing, acerbic, peremptory tone characteristic of many of the maxims. That children please us is beyond question. The question is not do they please us, but why do they please us. He has the answer: “Ce qui fait que la plupart des petits enfants plaisent, c'est qu'ils sont encore renfermés dans cet âge et dans ces manières que la nature leur a donnés, et qu'ils n'en connaissent point d'autre.” We like to see their spontaneous and natural behaviour. Le naturel is always appealing. We welcome and need the relief it offers from the spectacle of a world where men and women continually wear masks and put on airs and play roles. The contrast between le naturel and the pretentiousness, affectation, hypocrisy, and deception that the maxims set out to unmask appears on the very first page, in the frontispiece. And here a child does appear. A winged putto removes the mask from Seneca's scowling face. He is an innocent, natural, smiling, fun-loving child, “encore renfermé dans cet âge et dans ces manières que la nature lui a donnés” as it were. The motto of the frontispiece is from Horace: Quid vetat? What prevents us, it asks, from making fun of the vices of man? The child is identified as “l'amour de la vérité.” The mischievous smile on his face, like the motto, is a reminder that love of truth attacks falsehood sometimes with taut and sharp-tongued severity, but sometimes with a mocking smile as well.

The trouble with children is that as they leave childhood behind they fall into the ways of their elders, they become imperfect imitators of others, they want to be someone else, and they forget how to be themselves. They grow up adopting the tone and manners of others with no sense of their suitability, “sans considérer que ce qui convient à quelques-uns ne convient pas à tout le monde.” La Rochefoucauld has a keen sense of la convenance. A man's manners and way of being, the language he uses, and the place where he lives should be suitable to his character and profession. But we continue to try to be what we are not, blind to the disharmony between what we are and what we want to be. We try to take on the air and manners that befit the new rank to which we have been elevated or to which we aspire. Lieutenant-generals try to act like marshals, bourgeoises like duchesses.

Before our full engagement in the scramble for prestige and power, however, we must make our bashful, bumbling entry into society: “Il faut que les jeunes gens qui entrent dans le monde soient honteux ou étourdis: un air capable ou composé se tourne d'ordinaire en impertinence.” (M [maxime] 495) Bashfulness is not one of the human failings that La Rochefoucauld has anything very critical to say about. He was considered to be bashful himself, and not in youth alone but throughout his life. (Huet alleges that he refused his nomination to the French Academy because he shied away from public speaking.) An air of timidity is a distinct disadvantage in a grown man but is appropriate in the young. An air of capacity and self-composure in a young man, however, is a violation of la convenance. In manners and behaviour La Rochefoucauld looks for le naturel. But once childhood has passed the real article is rarely to be found. “La plupart des jeunes gens croient être naturels, lorsqu'ils ne sont que mal polis et grossiers.” (M 372)

The duc de La Rochefoucauld looks with distaste upon the bad manners and crudity of young people. Yet he refrains from directing his most piercing thrusts against their delusions and follies. In his definition of youth he is not the unmasker, the revealer of the narcissism and self-involvement hidden behind its smooth and attractive appearance, but the detached—perhaps even the slightly nostalgic—observer. “La jeunesse est une ivresse continuelle; c'est la fièvre de la raison.” (M 271) In the expansive assonances of its opening twelve-syllable sentence, and in the ringing conclusiveness of its equally assonant octosyllabic ending the artistry is evident. So is the critical tenor of what he has to say. Like les remèdes that often depend upon poison for their efficacy and sometimes do more harm than good, and la guérison which may be illusory, and la cicatrice which forever threatens to open up again, la fièvre is one of the medical terms he draws on to define the miseries of life and the failings of human beings. As for la raison, he regrets that it is too infrequently consulted and too often overruled and considers it as one of the positive qualities. Therefore the sooner the fever of reason breaks and the continual inebriation ends the better. And yet his disapproval of the hyperactivity, excitability, and changeability of youth is not notably severe. It seems likely that the unusually adventurous, active, and chaotic youth he had led, its excitement as well as its deep disillusions, were somewhere in his memory when he wrote his definition of youth. And in view of its tone, it seems likely that the bitterness of his backward glance was tempered with some slight measure of fondness.

It is true that in the maxims comparing youth and age neither condition fares well. “La jeunesse change ses goûts par l'ardeur du sang, et la vieillesse conserve les siens par accoutumance.” (M 109) In the long journey from flightiness to stodginess, from ardeur to accoutumance, the point of departure, on the face of it, is no more admirable than the point of arrival. In “Les passions de la jeunesse ne sont guère plus opposées au salut que la tiédeur des vieilles gens” (M 341) the balance between the vices of youth and the vices of old age again appears to be even. Yet La Rochefoucauld was clearly less repelled by the madness of l'ardeur du sang and les passions de la jeunesse than by the tedium of l'accoutumance and la tiédeur.

The tepidity of age, the cooling off of l'ardeur du sang, bring the old no closer to heaven's gate. The old are simply diminished beings, weary, disillusioned, and no longer capable of pursuing the pleasures of youth. That is what the definition of old age that counterbalances his definition of youth seems to say. “La vieillesse est un tyran qui défend sur peine de la vie tous les plaisirs de la jeunesse.” (M 461) Sur peine de la vie means sous peine de mort. A feeble, broken old man living under the tyranny of old age may face the death penalty if he attempts to pursue the dissipations of youth. La Rochefoucauld's friends liked to debate the meanings of various maxims and might have suggested another reading: the old tyrannize the young, strictly forbidding them to pursue the pleasures that they themselves have lost. But the old, as La Rochefoucauld sees them, do not have the vigor to exercise a tyranny. From “le premier penchant de l'âge” on their failings of mind and body are already manifest (M 222). They grow not in wisdom but in folly. “Les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes.” (M 444) A number of maxims comment wryly on the futility of giving advice and the self-satisfaction and sense of superiority advice-givers derive from it. Among them, the old men who preach morality seem particularly ridiculous to him. He goes after them with a maxim that is in some measure a joke: “Les vieillards aiment à donner de bons préceptes, pour se consoler de n'être plus en état de donner de mauvais exemples.” (M 93) But however futile and foolish the behaviour of sententious old men is, it is at least consonant with their age. Convenance requires the old to recognize that they are old and behave accordingly. Few of them know how to do that. That is the meaning of the tersest of all the maxims: “Peu de gens savent être vieux.” (M 423) He cites this maxim in a letter to Mme de Sablé and explains: “Ce qui sied bien en un temps ne sied pas bien en un autre.” (p. 589) In another maxim he condemns those who grow livelier with age. Vivacity may well be commendable at one time of life but in old age it is close to madness. “La vivacité qui augmente en vieillissant ne va pas loin de la folie.” (M 416) Old people should act their age.

The old are ridiculous in many ways, but never more so than when they forget that they are old. “Le plus dangereux ridicule des vieilles personnes qui ont été aimables, c'est d'oublier qu'elles ne le sont plus.” (M 408) A particularly vivid instance of how old men forget their true condition appears in “Les coquettes et les vieillards.” This réflexion diverse explores the social comedy provided by the coquette who engages the slavish admiration and devoted services of a vieillard and uses him to screen her real flirtations and amours. He is infinitely gullible, he believes the specious reasons the coquette gives for having so many admirers and for sometimes making open fun of him. It is for the pleasure of talking about him, she explains, and the better to hide her real feelings for him. Les vieillards who wait upon les coquettes live in a dream. But La Rochefoucauld does not propose that they should wake up and swallow a dose of the bitter truth that he likes to provide to readers of the maxims. The mood in the Réflexions diverses is mellower than in the maxims. In fact, he wonders if the silly old men are not better off in the bliss of their ignorance. Blinded by the illusion that they are loved, they are spared the sight of “leurs propres misères.” (RD XV)

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE

The foolishness and gullibility of old men should not surprise us overmuch. They have lived a long time, but they have no experience of old age until they get there. “Nous arrivons tout nouveaux aux divers âges de la vie, et nous y manquons d'expérience malgré le nombre des années.” (M 405) The vision of man moving through the flow of time from one stage of life to another which appears throughout literature from antiquity on undergirds many of the maxims³. “Nous sommes embarqués” says Pascal. We travel along our path from youth to age. As La Rochefoucauld's traveler makes his way he acquires, almost inevitably, whatever vice or vices are appropriate to the stage of his journey he has reached. But actually it is as if he lacked the energy and purpose to make any acquisition at all. He merely moves into a provisional dwelling place where he must live for a while before moving on. “On peut dire que les vices nous attendent dans le cours de la vie comme des hôtes chez qui il faut successivement loger; et je doute que l'expérience nous les fît éviter s'il nous était permis de faire deux fois le même chemin.” (M 191) The journey is tediously predictable and uninviting. Each successive vice is our obligatory place of residence, and even if the impossible opportunity to take the same trip again should arise the chances of avoiding yet another sojourn in the same lodgings are slight. The sense of fatigue and dreary sameness and the wry undercurrent of humor that hovers around this maxim may have been somewhere in T. S. Eliot's mind when he wrote the early poem, “The Boston Evening Transcript.” The quickening of evening which wakens in some the appetites of life brings to others the tedious predictability of the evening newspaper.

I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time, and he at the end of the street,
And I say, “Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.

The reference to La Rochefoucauld or rather “Rochefoucauld” (the same amputated form of the name appears in Jonathan Swift) has a particular fittingness, a kind of convenance. Time is slow, the street is long, the light is fading, and no prospect wakens the appetities of life.

In Maxim 297, which strikes the same deterministic note, we no longer move from vice to vice, but come under the successive rule of “les humeurs du corps.” They follow their predictable course and “exercent successivement un empire secret en nous.” They dictate much of our behaviour unbeknownst to us. “De l'Amour et de la vie,” (RD IX) offers a broader view of man caught in the inexorable flow of time, living through the “révolutions” and the “changements” that love and life bring to him. He moves along a path that sooner or later heads downward. At least the journey begins well. Youth is full of joy and hope. We forge ahead, we seek advancement and fortune, the cares and troubles of vying with others are erased by the pleasure of achieving our goal. But joy does not last long. This brings La Rochefoucauld to one of his most piercing observations of human acquisitiveness and human discontent and their interrelationship. “Ce que nous avons obtenu devient une partie de nous-mêmes: nous serions cruellemment touché de le perdre, mais nous ne sommes plus sensibles au plaisir de la conserver.” Time is the enemy. As it erases “un certain air de jeunesse et de gaieté,” we begin to take on “des manières plus sérieuses.” As soon as age sets in we can see the end coming, and if it is too long in coming we begin to feel the onset of the diseases that accompany it.

The point of “De l'Amour et de la vie” is that love and life follow the same course. Needless to say, his main interest is not in their flowering but in their decrepitude. What he calls “la vieillesse de l'amour” has a strong and peculiar fascination for him. In “De l'Amour et de la mer,” (RD VI) he returns to the image of life's journey to express the pain of “un amour usé, languissant, et sur sa fin.” The boredom, endlessness, and fatigue of a love that can no longer offer pleasures but still retains an ample supply of ills is like what you feel when your vessel is suspended in the doldrums, “ces longues bonaces” that you encounter in equatorial waters. Whatever travel accounts may have inspired his depiction of love in the doldrums, the analogy appealed to his imagination. He describes the scene with dark humor, and takes particular delight in its evocation of lassitude, boredom, fatigue, and defeat. Here, as in many of the other Réflexions diverses and, in fact, in some of the longer maxims, he allows himself to move away from concision and precision and welcomes the opportunity to let his imagination wander. You can see land, but you cannot get there, food and water have lost their flavor, the fish you catch offer no nourishment and no relief, you see the same sights, you think the same thoughts, you are still alive but you are tired of being alive.

La Rochefoucauld knew the effects of age and illness from personal experience. He told Mme de Sévigné when she visited him during one of his extremely painful attacks of gout that he wished for death as the coup de grâce. It is no surprise that la vieillesse and les maladies appear in several maxims. It would be harder to guess what made him return repeatedly to the subject of la vieillesse de l'amour. Is it an outgrow of meticulous salon discussions of love in all its aspects? Is it something he observed in others or even in himself? Perhaps, in some oblique and contrary way, the thought of his close relationship to Madame de Lafayette was somewhere in his mind when he wrote about the turn love takes when age sets in. Love ages and deteriorates, friendship endures. Yet la vieillesse and its disabilities was part of the experience that he, the gouty old man, and she, an invalid too and a hypochondriac as well, shared as two friends, and that may in some way have colored his thinking. But there are other less speculative explanations for his fascination with the subject. His interest in the flow of time, in the changes it brings to human appearance and feeling would certainly draw him to consideration of what he calls “la décrépitude de l'amour.” Any decline from freshness, excitement and spontaneity into decay, decrepitude, and boredom seems to appeal to his dark sense of humor and sharpen his wits. In “L'Inconstance,” (RD XVII) he returns once again to the diminishment and decay of love. Always drawn to the analogy between the life of plants and the life of men and women, he casts a tender glance at love in its first manifestations and then takes a sharper, longer look at what age and time do to it. “Il y a une première fleur d'agrément et de vivacité dans l'amour qui passe insensiblement, comme celle des fruits; ce n'est la faute de personne, c'est seulement la faute du temps.” Fire, novelty, beauty are gone, only the name of love remains. If the young could see what time was going to do to them no one would ever fall in love.

Love is for the young. As youth passes, ambition manifests itself more strongly, and once you are possessed by ambition you don't turn back until old age overtakes you. “On passe souvent de l'amour à l'ambition, mais on ne revient guère de l'ambition à l'amour.” (M 490) As a man moves along his way he tries, usually in vain, to prepare for the future, to arrange his past actions in a way that will redound to his credit, or at least spare him from shame, and to cope with what the present brings him. A man chooses the path he will follow to fame and glory. If he chooses the path of virtue vanity will keep him company. (M 200) Whatever path he chooses, folly will follow close at his heels. “La folie nous suit dans tous les temps de la vie. Si quelqu'un paraît sage, c'est seulement parce que les folies sont proportionnées a son âge et à sa fortune.” (M 207) Here again the idea of suitability, convenance, proportionality appears. There is a suitable folly for every age of life. And there are times when folly can serve a purpose. (M 310) Personal merit is also dependent upon the times. “Le mérite des hommes a sa saison aussi bien que les fruits.” (M 291) Not time alone, but timing too, powerfully affects failure and success. And once one's merit has gone out of season it loses its effect. People have their moments and the moments pass away. “Il y a des gens qui ressemblent aux vaudevilles qu'on ne chante qu'un certain temps.” (M 211).

Public taste is fickle. A song is popular for a while and then fades away. Individuals are no less changeable. Nothing stays in place. Feelings, like follies, vanish, but they are replaced by other feelings and other follies. “Il y a dans le coeur humain une génération perpétuelle de passions, de sorte que la ruine de l'une est presque toujours l'établissement d'une autre.” (M 10) What we disapprove of at one time we approve of at a later time (M 51), we cannot feel the same feeling persistently, we tire of feeling gratitude for good deeds done on our behalf and we tire of seeking vengeance for harm done to us. (M 14) We tire of our old acquaintances, and love to make new ones, in the hopes that they will admire us more than those who know us too well. (M 178) Although true love is something that people talk about and hardly ever experience (M 76, M 77) we may actually happen to fall in love. But love cannot subsist without continuous motion. (M 75) It is in fact “une inconstance perpétuelle,” as lovers discover new qualities in one another “successivement.” And when we fall out of love we wonder, like Swann in A La Recherche du temps perdu, how we could have been so foolish. “Il n'y a guère de gens qui ne soient honteux de s'être aimés quand ils ne s'aiment plus.” (M 71)

For all his fickleness, inconstance, and légéreté, man's urge to get ahead of others, to achieve high rank and prestige remains constant, not fading away until bad luck or error or the meanness and envy of others block his way and cause him to retire from the race. At the beginning one faces “les diverses voies qui paraissent ouvertes aux jeunes gens pour parvenir aux grandeurs, aux plaisirs, à la réputation.” But when age sets in, one is often thrown off the right track, and “le chemin pour y rentrer est trop long et trop pénible.” (RD XVIII) Hope is one path that remains open to all, even the old. “L'espérance, toute trompeuse qu'elle est, sert au moins à nous mener à la fin de la vie par un chemin agréable.” (M 169) It does not get you anywhere, but if you can manage to stay on it, it is one of the few paths he points to that offer an agreeable voyage. Most travelers choose more arduous paths. “Les chemins qui mènent à la gloire”—closed to women, as he points out in M 233—are strewn with pitfalls. Even if they take you where you want to go, your glory may be tarnished if observers have been watching what steps you took to get there. “La gloire des grands hommes se doit toujours mesurer aux moyens dont ils se sont servis pour l'acquérir.” (M 157) The dishonest, underhanded, hypocritical ways of gaining prestige and honor are of course plentiful. La Rochefoucauld enjoys revealing a few of them, sometimes in rather unexpected hiding places. The scorn of riches can be “un chemin détourné pour aller à la considération.” (M 54) Goodness, the apparent altruism of those who strive to bring advantage to others, is “le chemin le plus assuré pour arriver à ses fins.” (M 236) A good way to get where you are going is to pretend that you have already got there. “Pour s'établir dans le monde, on fait tout ce que l'on peut pour y paraître établi.” (M 56) Appearance is everything. A truly able person continually makes a show of condemning underhandedness, and never uses it until a really worthwhile opportunity presents itself. “Les plus habiles affectent toute leur vie de blâmer les finesses pour s'en servir en quelque grande occasion et pour quelque grand intérêt.” (M 124)

LES OCCASIONS ET LES ACCIDENTS

It is les occasions that put men to the test. You can never tell when they are going to happen. Events are in the lap of God. It is vain and ignorant to suppose that prudence makes us ready to cope with them. The praise of prudence as the quality that provides us with all the help we need from heaven, that overmasters fortune and builds empires deeply irritates La Rochefoucauld. His outburst against it, close to half a page long, appears in full only in the earlier editions of the maxims. He later pared it down to two sentences, and removed the reference to God, as he did in almost all of the maxims, but deprived it of none of its vigor: “Il n'y a point d'éloges qu'on ne donne à la prudence. Cependant elle ne saurait nous assurer du moindre événement.” (M 65) His contempt for prudence is counterbalanced by his unreserved admiration for its opposite quality, l'intrépidité, the power of soul that enables a hero to face “les accidents les plus surprenants et les plus terribles” calmly and intelligently. (M 217) Intrepidity is a quality that he naturally reveres as a soldier and an aristocrat. But that does not mean that bourgeois caution and canniness are what he finds ignominious about prudence The prudence he attacks has a far broader meaning and can be regarded as traditional wisdom itself. Furetière defines prudence as “La première des vertus cardinales, qui enseigne à bien conduire sa vie et ses moeurs, ses discours et ses actions selon la droite raison.” The virtue that exercises control over all aspects of your life, and thus prepares you for the changes and surprises that time brings with it is as suspect and false in La Rochefoucauld's mind as the other supposed virtues he sets out to unmask. As he says in the longer version printed in the first edition, the self-satisfaction we feel for possessing it is simply another manifestation of our amour-propre. It is like him to discover amour-propre almost anywhere. Montaigne views la prudence with the same skepticism, and says substantially the same thing, as he so often does: “C'est chose vaine et frivole que l'humaine prudence.”⁴ The maxims are a long way from the essays in form. But they explore the same territory—the terres inconnues of human illusion, self-contradiction, and instability—and what La Rochefoucauld discovers with pinpoint precision and brevity had often been more fully discovered in the wide, loose, wandering explorations of Montaigne.

We waste our time when we try to foresee what is going to happen next. “Il vaut mieux exercer notre esprit à supporter les infortunes qui nous arrivent qu'à prévoir celles qui nous peuvent arriver.” (M 174) The future cannot be foretold. La Rochefoucauld's best known maxim on the unpredictability of events is not in any of his writings, however, but in a remark reported in the memoirs of Lenet. The Fronde, with its strange succession of alliances and enmities that are formed and dissolved and then appear again in another shape, brought about a situation in which Mazarin and La Rochefoucauld found themselves at temporary peace and riding in the same carriage. As they sat side by side Mazarin commented upon how surprised both of them would have been if this turn of events had been foretold eight days previously, and La Rochefoucauld responded “Tout arrive en France.” Anything can happen is what he is saying. More unexpected events may have occurred in France at that time than elsewhere because of the Fronde, but they can happen anywhere, The réflexion diverse “Des Evénements de ce siècle” enumerates the extraordinary and singular events that took place throughout Europe during his century: Marie de Medici's exile, the Queen of Sweden's adventures, Masaniello's revolt, Cromwell's rise to power, Lauzun's engagement to la Grande Mademoiselle and so on. The last paragraph of the first part of his Mémoires, a summary of Richelieu's achievements in which admiration wins out over animosity, shows that La Rochefoucauld was capable of taking a broad and inclusive view of historical changes brought about by a persistent policy carried out over a period of time. But here the history of his own time is little more than a succession of random, paradoxical, unpredictable events, distinguishable, he says, from the events of the past only by their greater criminality.

There is no predictable pattern to the succession of events. As the saying goes, it's just one damned thing after another. That familiar, plebeian commonplace does not sit comfortably in the company of the maxims, but it is implicit in many of them. The passage of time brings on unforeseen events. Confronted with one damned thing after another the question man faces is not what comes next—nobody can answer that one—but how to respond to it when it comes. Sometimes a touch of craziness may be the only way out. “Il arrive quelquefois des accidents dans la vie, d'où il faut être un peu fou pour sortir.” (M 310) Even in those times when you have to be “un peu fou” to handle the situation, the way you cope with the unexpected will show what you are made of. “Il n'y a point d'accidents si malheureux dont les habiles gens ne tirent quelque avantage, ni de si heureux que les imprudents ne puissent tourner à leur préjudice.” (M 59) The word imprudent seems to present a contradiction. If the imprudents get into trouble, then prudence, denounced as useless in maxim 65, must have its merits after all. But if we take imprudent to mean maladroit as Jacques Truchet suggests, then what accounts for the way the imprudent have of making a happy turn of events work against them is not their lack of prudence, that false virtue, but their clumsiness. The imprudents are the opposite not of les prudents but of les habiles, the clever, resourceful people who stoop to underhandedness only when it pays off (M 24) and can find advantage even in the most unpropitious circumstances.

Our good and bad qualities are uncertain, ill-defined until les occasions and les accidents come along. “Toutes nos qualiités sont incertaines et douteuses en bien comme en mal, et elles sont presque toutes à la merci des occasions.” (M 470) Things happen by chance, and not until they happen do we discover what our real abilities and disabilities are. “La plupart des hommes ont comme les plantes des propriétés cacheés, que le hasard fait découvrir.” (M 344) When these occasions arise it is not only others who discover our hidden properties but ourselves as well. “Les occasions nous font connaître aux autres, et encore plus à nous-mêmes.” (M 345) Man is not always passively dependent upon circumstances, however. He cannot foretell les occasions nor can he succeed in trying to bring them about, but when they present themselves he can be ready to take advantage of them. “Dans les grandes affaires on doit moins s'appliquer à faire naître des occasions qu'à profiter de celles qui se présentent.” (M 453) More than that, there are a few men who are not only able to take full advantage of the fortuitous but who have a steady purpose in life and keep it in sight. These are not men who conduct their lives according to the illusory precepts of wisdom and prudence, but men who are able to form a dessein and keep it in sight whatever favors or insults fortune brings their way. But what appears to be part of un grand dessein may in reality arise from some baser motivation. More often than not, the great try to attribute to their grands desseins the glorious and dazzling deeds that were in fact brought about by their humeur or their passions. In maxim 7 he cites Augustus and Anthony as his examples. It may well be that they were not motivated by the great purposes we ascribe to them but merely by the anxiety each felt that the other might usurp his power. True greatness is measured by the greatness of a man's aims. Les grandes âmes are those who have formed de plus grands desseins. (MS [maxime supprimée] 31) An achievement that is not the result of a plan and a purpose, but comes by chance, from a sudden impulse, a stroke of luck, a fortunate set of circumstances cannot be a great achievement. “Quelque éclatante que soit une action, elle ne doit pas passer pour grande lorsqu'elle n'est pas l'effet d'un grand dessein.” (M 160) Men who possess a great purpose are rare, yet La Rochefoucauld knows that they do exist, just as he knows that intrepidity and elevation, rare as they are too, are also real. Alexander and Caesar, Turenne and Condé, figures who appear in “Des Modèles de la nature et de la fortune” (RD XIV) certainly number among the men capable of forming a “grand dessein.” In the crowded cast of the Mémoires one man stands out for the “grandeur dans ses desseins:” his opponent, Richelieu.⁵

Most of humanity falls far short of such heroic achievements, however. Most men are eagerly caught up in the immediate struggle to acquire honor, reputation, and influence. They lack the power of mind and spirit to form un grand dessein. Their highest aim is the pursuit of their short-term self-interest. And since we all have more than one desire driving us onward, unless we are habiles we fail to satisfy our needs because we do not know how to put them in order. “Un habile homme doit régler le rang de ses intérêts et les conduire chacun dans son ordre. Notre avidité le trouble souvent en nous faisant courir à tant de choses à la fois que, pour désirer trop les moins importantes, on manque les plus considérables.” (M 66) We lead lives of continuous agitation, we are continually running after our goals. Considering the part he played as close friend, adviser, and possibly collaborator of Madame de Lafayette while she was writing La Princesse de Clèves it is not surprising to find in a description of the court from its opening pages an effective portrait of the world La Rochefoucauld's restless strivers and seekers live in. “Personne n'était tranquille ni indifférent; on songeait à s'élever, à plaire, à servir, ou à nuire.”⁶ We travel far and wide in pursuit of our interests. “L'homme court la terre et la mer pour ses intérêts.” (MP [maxime posthume] 26) It seems as if the race never ends. And if we are really persistent it never does. No matter how shamefully we may stumble and fall we almost always have the ability to recover. “Quelque honte que nous ayons méritée, il est presque toujours en notre pouvoir de rétablir notre réputation.” (M 412) But if a stroke of good luck allows us to achieve our goal with unexpected suddenness, not by climbing the ladder step by step but by sudden promotion, we do not know how to play the new part we have been given convincingly and look as if we were worthy of it. (M 449) And if we do not look worthy of the “grande place” to which we have been suddenly appointed the satisfaction it offers dwindles away. That is because we value our reputation and our reputation depends on the “jugement des hommes.” To gain favor with others who may be hostile, or jealous, or simply too ignorant to pass judgment on us we risk “notre repos et notre vie.” (M 268)

WITHDRAWAL AND RETREAT

A man's life, like the life of his unquenchable amour-propre, is “une grande et longue agitation.” (MS 1) As we are carried along by the flow of time we may feel intermittent yearnings to withdraw from the ceaseless agitation, the striving to get ahead or to recover after a disgrace, from the accidents that we cannot prepare for, and whose challenge we must try to meet, from the arbitrary judgments that others make of us and on which we depend for our sense of self-worth, from all of the vicissitudes of life. The serenity of le repos that we have so willingly sacrificed becomes infinitely desirable. But it is not easy to find. There is no point in looking for it anywhere but in yourself. (MS 61) Most of us never find it. But we do find a measure of relief when old age forces us into retirement. This is the condition he examines in “La Retraite” (RD XVIII). In “La Société” (RD II) he takes it for granted that we need the company of others. “Il serait inutile de dire combien la société est nécessaire aux hommes.” But that need diminishes as we grow old. And that is just as well because others need our company even less than we need theirs. The old are weak in body, fatigued, and disillusioned. But they are free at last, “affranchis de la dépendance du monde.” They are absorbed by their infirmities, but “le moindre relâche leur tient lieu de bonheur.” Temporary relief from pain (gout was no doubt on his mind), and permanent relief from the agitation of life are welcome. And yet “La Retraite” is no celebration of the liberty that old age grants and of its little advantages. Even in the Réflexions diverses the mood of dour negativity is seldom dispelled for long. La Rochefoucauld continues to provide his work with the sour and the bitter flavors that give it its distinctive tang. The life of those who have withdrawn into passivity, as he portrays it, is far from idyllic, and he concludes on an appropriately discouraging note: “Ils soutiennent le poids d'une vie insipide et languissante.” The life of the old is a burden and a bore.

There is another, much more beguiling retreat from the active life with its constant efforts and its meager rewards and the disappointment we feel if we happen to get what we thought we wanted. It is a retreat that is open to anyone at any time of life: “la Paresse.” Our laziness, our sloth, our idleness provide an easy, accessible way out of the rat-race. It is less of a retreat, however, than a total defeat. Those who have succumbed to old age have at least become “maîtres de leur desseins.” But those who have given way to laziness are masters of nothing. In two of the three maxims which take on the subject “la paresse” is described as “la maîtresse,” and her rule is universal. “Elle usurpe sur tous les desseins et sur toutes les actions de la vie. Elle y détruit et y consomme insensiblement les passions et les vertus.” (M 266)

The destructive power of la paresse could scarcely be expressed more vehemently. If Mme de Sablé is to be believed this wholehearted attack on la paresse comes from the laziest man who ever lived. “L'auteur a trouvé dans son humeur la maxime de la paresse. Car jamais il n'y en a eu une si grande que la sienne.” (p. 567, note 18) That is no doubt an overstatement. She goes on to say that he is too lazy to do anything for anyone else or even for himself. It is hard to give credit to such a harsh judgment of the man who Madame de Sévigné considered to be “l'homme le plus aimable que j'ai jamais vu.”⁷ On the other hand, it seems more than possible that La Rochefoucauld was inclined to laziness and did not mind admitting it. Few people do. “De tous nos défauts, celui dont nous demeurons le plus aisément d'accord c'est la paresse.” (M 398) In her response to the maxim on the power of laziness Mme de Schonberg confesses that she too knows its allure. In her view, none of his maxims is more penetrating or truer. She chooses to overlook the last three words of the maxim—“elle y détruit et y consume insensiblement les passions et les vertus”—and to look upon it, with a certain irony no doubt, as a tribute to the great merit of laziness. “On doit l'estimer comme la seule vertu qu'il y a dans le monde, puisque c'est elle qui déracine tous les vices; j'ai toujours eu beaucoup de respect pour elle, je suis fort aise qu'elle ait un si grand mérite.” (p. 566).

La Rochefoucauld, of course, sees no such merit in la paresse. It is allied to la faiblesse, the one fault of character that cannot be mended, and to la timidité. It has none of the power of la haine, l'orgueil, la vanité, and l'intérêt. In fact, it is opposed to la force, the quality that is necessary to all action, whether good or evil. Yet the maxim which denounces it, paradoxically, as the most ardent of passions—“la plus ardente et la plus maligne de toutes.” (MS 54)—is also a fervent tribute to its power and its attraction. It can bring a halt to our most ambitious projects. The same metaphor that he uses in “De l'amour et de la mer” appears. “C'est une bonace plus dangereuse aux plus importantes affaires que les écueils, et que les plus grandes tempêtes.” It is the remora that can stop the greatest vessels. As he went on assembling and revising La Rochefoucauld rarely broke the rule he seems to have set for himself of no more than one metaphor or simile per maxim. That could be one reason why he dropped this one after the first edition. Another might be the fervor of his tribute to the charm of laziness. “Le repos de la paresse est un charme secret de l'âme.” Few readers of the maxims on love believe him when he says in his self-portrait that he has never know “les grands sentiments de l'amour.” (p. 258) And few will believe that he has never known the consoling and healing power of la paresse. La vieillesse, which is the other retreat from the life of endless effort and endless disappointment offers only “une vie insipide et languissante.” He speaks of la paresse in entirely different terms. His tribute to the most ardent of all our passions, the mistress of all our interests and our pleasures has a biblical resonance and even a certain reverence: “Il faut dire que la paresse est comme une béatitude de l'âme qui la console de toutes ses pertes, et qui tient lieu de tous les biens.”

As he experiences the vicissitudes that time brings, the ups and downs of life, the fatigue, the disappointments, the pursuits, the daunting failures and the joyless successes, the folly of youth and the folly of old age, man can scarcely help longing for consolation. It is with more than a trace of irony, but hardly a trace of bitterness that La Rochefoucauld discovers the blessed state, the “béatitude de l'âme” that man yearns for in the most powerful and irresistible of the passions: “la Paresse.”

Notes

1. The phrase, destined to acquire great resonance, is from maxime supprimée 6. References are to La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, ed. Jacques Truchet (Paris, Garnier, 1967). Abbreviations: M = maxime, MS = maxime supprimée, MP = maxime posthume. RD = réflexion diverse. Page references are to the self-portrait and letters about the maxims included in this edition.

2. La Bruyère, Les Caractères, ed. Robert Pignarre (Paris, Garnier, 1965), p. 274.

3. Many antecedents of the image of man as traveler and pilgrim in antiquity, in the Bible, in Medieval and Renaissance literature, both religious and lay, are listed in Louis Van Delft, Le Moraliste classique (Droz, Geneva, 1982), in the section entitled homo viator, pp. 176-190.

4. Montaigne, Essais, ed. Albert Thibaudet (Paris, Gallimard, 1950), I, 24, p. 156.

5. La Rochefoucauld, Œuvres complètes, ed. L. Martin-Chauffier, (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), 58. Richelieu is the aigle of the Mémoires. La Rochefoucauld knew his severity, manipulative skills, and ruthlessness at first hand, but was able to see beyond them to the greatness of his accomplishment. His other enemy, Mazarin, is the serpent. La Rochefoucauld never saw, or never acknowledged, that Mazarin's serpentine, deceitful, underhanded ways eventually brought about much of what Richelieu had set out to do.

6. Madame de Lafayette, Œuvres complètes, ed. Roger Duchène (Paris, Bourin, 1990), p. 277.

7. Madame de Sévigné, Correspondance, ed. Roger Duchène (Paris, Gallimard, 1972-78), I, p. 511.