sub-title--'Les Moeurs de ce Siècle'--gives a juster notion of its
contents. The whole of society, as it appeared to the subtle and
penetrating gaze of La Bruyère, flows through its pages. In them,
Versailles rises before us, less in its outward form than in its
spiritual content--its secret, essential self. And the judgement which
La Bruyère passes on this vision is one of withering scorn. His
criticism is more convincing than La Rochefoucauld's because it is based
upon a wider and a deeper foundation. The vanity which _he_ saw around
him was indeed the vanity of the Preacher--the emptiness, the
insignificance, the unprofitableness, of worldly things. There was
nothing too small to escape his terrible attention, and nothing too
large. His arraignment passes from the use of rouge to the use of
torture, from the hypocrisies of false devotion to the silly absurdities
of eccentrics, from the inhumanity of princes to the little habits of
fools. The passage in which he describes the celebration of Mass in the
Chapel of Versailles, where all the courtiers were to be seen turning
their faces to the king's throne and their backs to the altar of God,
shows a spirit different indeed from that of Bossuet--a spirit not far
removed from the undermining criticism of the eighteenth century itself.
Yet La Bruyère was not a social reformer nor a political theorist: he
was simply a moralist and an observer. He saw in a flash the condition
of the French peasants--

Certains animaux farouches, des mâles et des femelles, répandus par
la campagne, noirs, livides, et tout brulés du soleil, attachés à
la terre qu'ils fouillent et qu'ils remuent avec une opiniâtreté
invincible; ils out comme une voix articulée, et, quand ils se
lèvent sur leurs pieds, ils montrent une face humaine: et en effet
ils sont des hommes--