The "Characters" of Jean de La BruyèreLa Bruyère, Jean de
General
The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère
La Bruyère, Jean de
Character sketches -- Early works to 1800; Characters and characteristics
(127.) There must, I confess, be seizures of land, distraint
on furniture, prisons, and punishments; but without taking into
consideration justice, law, and stern necessity, it has always
astonished me to observe with what violence some men treat other men.
(128.) Certain wild animals, male and female, are scattered over the
country, dark, livid, and quite tanned by the sun, who are chained, as
it were, to the land they are always digging and turning up and down
with an unwearied stubbornness; their voice is somewhat articulate, and
when they stand erect they discover a human face, and, indeed, are men.
At night they retire to their burrows, where they live on black bread,
water, and roots; they spare other men the trouble of sowing, tilling
the ground, and reaping for their sustenance, and, therefore, deserve
not to be in want of that bread they sow themselves.
(129.) Don Fernando resides in his province, and is idle, ignorant,
slanderous, quarrelsome, knavish, intemperate, and impertinent; but he
draws his sword against his neighbours, and exposes his life for the
smallest trifle; he has killed several men, and will be killed in his
turn.[586]
(130.) A provincial nobleman, useless to his country, his family and
himself, often without a roof to cover himself, without clothes or the
least merit, tells you ten times a day that he is of noble lineage,
despises all graduates, doctors, and presidents of parliaments[587] as
upstarts, and spends all his time among parchments and old title-deeds,
which he would not part with to be appointed chancellor.[588]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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