The link is clear, in spite of the foliage with which La Bruyere seeks to conceal it. It could only be from La Rochefoucauld that the author of "Les Caracteres" derived that sad disillusionment, lighted up by flashes of savage wit, with which he expresses his sense of the defects of human character. It may often be noted that when La Bruyere speaks of egotism, of the prevalence of _amour-propre_, his pungent phrases have the very sound of those of his precursor. The truth is that a strong new book is not read by a young man whose genius is prepared for its teaching, without its image being stamped upon his mind. La Bruyere's own experience had already offered to him a banquet of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when he met with the "Maximes" of 1665. His conscience and his memory were prepared, and the truth is that a great deal of La Rochefoucauld's teaching passed into his veins without his knowing it. This does not in the least undermine the reputation which justly belongs to La Bruyere as one of the most original writers of France, or even of Europe, but it links him for our intelligence with the other great moralist of his century. The author of the "Maximes" was the head of one of the great princely houses of France. The author of the "Caracteres" was the type of the plebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the quintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyere is not less a specimen of the middle class. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his own joke about his ancestry. He wrote, "I warn everybody whom it may concern, in order that the world may be prepared and nobody be surprised, that if ever it should happen that one of the mighty of the earth should deem me worthy of his care, in other words if I should ever come into an immense fortune, there is a Godefroi de La Bruyere whom all the chroniclers place in the list of the greatest nobles of France who followed Godefroi de Bouillon to the conquest of the Holy Land. When that happens, I shall descend from him in the direct line." One would think that a child could perceive this to be a satire at the profiteers of the age, who invented ancestors, and so a child would to-day, but in the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century it was not safe to be funny. In particular, nonsense--the divine charm of which we now admit--had not been acclimatized, and was looked upon with grave displeasure. It wrings the heart that when Goldsmith, in a purple coat, pretended to think himself more attractive than the Jessamy Bride, his contemporaries severely censured this as an instance of his "vanity."