The seventeenth century in France, liberated from the weight of internecine wars and political tyrannies, had now thrown itself with ardour into the civilized arts, and had, in particular, developed a love of moral disquisition. All the talk which presently became fashionable about virtue and the higher life was a reaction against the horrors of the Fronde. The advance of social refinement was very rapid, and, especially in Paris, there was a determined and intelligent movement in the direction of the amelioration of manners and a studied elegance of life. M. Rebelliau has pointed out that it was precisely at this moment that a great number of new words, and among them _delicate, distinguer, moraliste, menagements, finesse_ and many others, were accepted as part of the French language. These served immediately to enrich the vocabulary of the men and women who were anxious to push further and deeper their investigations into psychological analysis. With this social tendency to dissect the human heart and to seize its most secret movements, was combined the religious and, as we may put it, protestant fashion of the hour, in the spirit of Port Royal. To be a moralist was almost in itself to be a Jansenist, and we see the author of the "Maximes" presently claiming to be, after a fashion, evangelical. There is so little said about theology, in the direct sense, in the writings of La Rochefoucauld, that his various French critics have given perhaps too little thought to his religious tendencies. They have treated him as though he were the enemy of a pious life. But if we examine that contention from the standpoint provided for us by our own Puritan habit of thought, we must recognize that there was something positively pious about the bitter philosopher of the "Maximes." He was trying, let us never forget, to discover a scientific form of morals, and hardly enough attention has been given to the prominence which he gave to a searching analysis of conscience. He found little to help him in the court religion of the age, but he was immensely impressed with the Jansenist conception of the frailty and worthlessness of the natural man. Hence, his persistency in cultivating almost exclusively the society of those men and women of Port Royal with whom we might suppose that he had very little in common. But, quite recently, a discovery has been made, which is not only of special interest to us as Englishmen, but which throws a further light on the evangelical or puritan tendency of the author of the "Maximes."