Vauvenargues has a saying to the effect that men very often, without thinking of it, form an idea of their face and expression from the ruling sentiment of which they are conscious in themselves at the time. He hints that this is perhaps the reason why a coxcomb always believes himself to be handsome.[54] And in a letter to Mirabeau, he describes pleasantly how sometimes in moments of distraction he pictures himself with an air of loftiness, of majesty, of penetration, according to the idea that is occupying his mind, and how if by chance he sees his face in the mirror, he is nearly as much amazed as if he saw a Cyclops or a Tartar.[55] Yet his nature, if we may trust the portrait, revealed itself in his face; it is one of the most delightful to look upon, even in the cold inarticulateness of an engraving, that the gallery of fair souls contains for us. We may read the beauty of his character in the soft strength of the brow, the meditative lines of mouth and chin, above all, the striking clearness, the self-collection, the feminine solicitude, that mingle freely and without eagerness or expectancy in his gaze, as though he were hearkening to some ever-flowing inward stream of divine melody. We think of that gracious touch in Bacon's picture of the father of Solomon's House, that 'he had an aspect as though he pitied men.' If we reproach France in the eighteenth century with its coarseness, artificiality, shallowness, because it produced such men as the rather brutish Duclos, we ought to remember that this was also the century of Vauvenargues, one of the most tender, lofty, cheerful, and delicately sober of all moralists. [Footnote 1: _Pensees_, i. v. 8.] [Footnote 2: _Ib._ i. vi. 16.] [Footnote 3: _Ib._ i. vii. 6.] [Footnote 4: M. Gilbert's edition of the _Works and Correspondence of Vauvenargues_ (2 vols. Paris: Furne, 1857), ii. 133.] [Footnote 5: _Eloge de P.H. de Seytres_. _OEuv._ i. 141-150.] [Footnote 6: _OEuv._ ii. 233. See too p. 267.] [Footnote 7: No. 579, i. 455.] [Footnote 8: _Reflexions sur Divers Sujets_, i. 104.] [Footnote 9: _OEuv._ ii. 249.] [Footnote 10: _Ib._ ii. 265.] [Footnote 11: _Ib._ ii. 266.] [Footnote 12: _Conseils a un Jeune Homme_, i. 124.] [Footnote 13: _OEuv._ ii. 252.] [Footnote 14: _Ib._ ii. 272.] [Footnote 15: _Memoires de Marmontel_, vol. i. 189.] [Footnote 16: The reader of Marmontel's _Memoires_ will remember the extraordinary and grotesque circumstances under which a younger brother of Mirabeau, (of _l'ami des hommes_, that is) appealed to the memory of Vauvenargues. See vol. i. 256-260.] [Footnote 17: _OEuv._ i. 225-232.] [Footnote 18: _Letter to Saint-Vincens_, ii. 146.] [Footnote 19: No. 318.]