A typical instance of the mixture of courage and tact in the young author is to be found in the attitude which he took up towards Voltaire with regard to the Marquise de Pompadour, without in the least offending his tempestuous friend. That remarkable young lady, then still known as la petite Etoile, had succeeded in catching the King's eye, and was soaring into the political heavens like a rocket, carrying, among other incongruous objects, the genius of Voltaire in her glittering train. Voltaire must have boasted to his young friend that his fortune was made. Vauvenargues surprisingly expresses in his reply the evil which must be done by great authors who flatter vice and think to conceal its corruption by heaping flowers over a lie. The incident is important for us, because it led Vauvenargues, thus disappointed in Voltaire as he had been disappointed in Mirabeau, to examine into the sources of the low moral condition of the age. He attributed it to "le mepris de la gloire," and he set himself to define this quality and to impress it, with all the force of repetition, on the dulled consciences of his contemporaries. It is extremely difficult, it is well-nigh impossible, to find an equivalent in English for the word "gloire." It is a French conception, and one to which our language does not readily, or gracefully, lend itself. In the mind of Vauvenargues the idea of "gloire" took the central place, and we may form an intelligent conception of the meaning he stamped upon the word, by repeating some of his axioms. He says: "The flush of dawn is not so lovely as the earliest experiences of _gloire_. _Gloire_ makes heroes beautiful." Again: "Nothing is so essential as renown, and nothing so surely gives renown as merit; these are things that reason itself has united, and why should we distinguish true _gloire_ from merit, which is the source of it, and of which it is the proof?" This moral union of merit, glory and renown, in triple splendour revolving round each other, was the main object of Vauvenargues' contemplation, and he admits that the central passion of his life was "l'amour de la gloire." What, then, is the exact meaning of "la Gloire," which the dictionaries superficially translate by "glory,"--a very different thing?