But why had he, so long completely his own master, consented to become the servant even of famous Royal princes? I think that as mothers accept irksome situations for the support of their children, so La Bruyere became the serf of the Condes for the sake of his book. For it is now time to reveal the fact that in this apparently listless, empty life there was one absorbing secret interest. This was the collection of the maxims, reflections, pictures, and what not which he had been quietly absorbing and turning into the honey of more and more exquisite prose ever since his early youth. I think that La Bruyere deliberately accepted all that might prove irksome in the captivity to the House of Conde for the sole sake of his book. He needed to see more types, and types of a more brilliant and effective kind than he could become familiar with in his mediocre condition. He knew all that was to be known about the artizans and the shopkeepers of the Cite; he wanted to examine the rulers of society, and while he watched them like a naturalist, they might make what contortions they pleased. How did one of his contemporaries describe him? "When Menippe leaves his home, it is for the purpose of studying the attitudes of the whole human race and of painting them from the life. But he is not merely a portrait-painter, he is an anatomist as well. Do you see that vain and arrogant fellow in the midst of his good fortune? He is enchanted to think Menippe is admiring him. What a mistake! At this very moment Menippe is dissecting him and preparing him as a specimen for a public lecture in the schools. Not a vein, not a fibre will escape him, and from that man's heart he will draw the inmost springs of passion and expose the circulation of every vice."