Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon,
Shawn Wheeler, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
1900
"Two-thirds of my life is passed, why should I so distress myself aboutwhat remains? The most brilliant fortune does not deserve all the troubleI take, the pettiness I detect in myself, or the humiliations and shame Iendure; thirty years will destroy those giants of power which can be seenonly by raising the head; we shall disappear, I who am so petty, and thosewhom I regard so eagerly, from whom I expected all my greatness. The mostdesirable of all blessings is repose, seclusion, a little spot we can callour own." When La Bruyère expressed himself so bitterly, when he spoke ofthe court "which satisfies no one," but "prevents one from being satisfiedanywhere else," of the court, "that country where the joys are visible butfalse, and the sorrows hidden, but real," he had before him the brilliantPalace of Versailles, the unrivalled glory of the Sun King, a monarchywhich thought itself immovable and eternal. What would he say in thiscentury when dynasties fail like autumn leaves, and it takes much lessthan thirty years to destroy the giants of power; when the exile of to-dayrepeats to the exile of the morrow the motto of the churchyard: Hodiemihi, eras tibi? What would this Christian philosopher say at a time whenroyal and imperial palaces have been like caravansaries through whichsovereigns have passed like travellers, when their brief resting-placeshave been consumed by the blaze of petroleum and are now but a heap ofashes?
The study of any court is sure to teach wisdom and indifference to humanglories. In our France of the nineteenth century, fickle as it ha