偽善 是 邪惡 向 美德 的 致敬

The editors assure us:

the same may be said of his Maxims. Few books as widely read have provoked as much resistance. Most of us can no more look at it without wavering than we could the sun. We cannot bear the thought that it might be true; the consequences would be too painful. So, to shut our eyes to it, to avoid facing it, we rely on every psychological defence we can muster. The book is a work of cynicism, pessimism, scepticism, Jansenism, or some other limited and limiting -ism; we ourselves are much wiser, and take a broader, more balanced view of humanity. Or it is inconsistent, and contains its own refutation. Or it is true only of La Rochefoucauld himself (how corrupt he must be, to be capable of thinking us corrupt!). Or it may be true of many people, but it is not true of us. Or if it is, it is true of us only in our worst moments, or only in some details. Or if we do happen to entertain the thought that it might be wholly true, we entertain that thought only while actually reading it; a few minutes later we put the book aside and turn our minds to other, more comfortable things; we live, in practice, as if we had never read it.

A Few Samplers:

My favorite Maxim? It would be this:

There is more pride than kindness in our reprimands to people who are at fault; and we reprove them not so much to correct them as to convince them that we ourselves are free from such wrongdoing.

We would have few pleasures if we never flattered ourselves.

While laziness and timidity keep us to the path of duty, our virtue often gets all the honour.

The sure way to be deceived is to think yourself more astute than other people.

An Easy Escape:

Most of the maxims employ rhetorical techniques that ambiguously and ironically leave room for each individual reader to dissociate himself or herself from the work’s judgements. The strategy is made explicit in the ‘Note to the Reader’:

‘The reader’s best policy is to start with the premiss that none of these maxims is directed specifically at him, and that he is the sole exception to them, even though they seem to be generally applicable. After that, I guarantee that he will be the first to subcribe to them.’

Are you then quite wise? Don’t kid yourself.

Most probably you are just uncouth, lacking refinement of thought to even think so deeply of your own nature. To wit: Uncouthness is sometimes enough to save you from being deceived by a clever man.

A Better Guide to Reading:

A better approach (one this reviewer would recommend) to reading these Maxims is to force yourself into being the subject of every maxim no matter how hard it is on your pride.

Accept the hard truths and heap them on yourselves. Reflect on possible actions that reflected on your hypocrisies, vanities and pride. Reflect on your self-deceit until you can accept easily that indeed you are prone to it.

A Pithy Summation:

In summation, all virtues are derided and exposed. Shown to comprise of a malignant core.

Core: Self-flattery and Self-interest
They form the core of all virtues, just as surely as of all vices.
Example: Virtue would not go so far if vanity did not keep her company.

Indeed it will be difficult to persuade any man of good sense that they are being condemned for any other reasons than hidden self-interest, pride, and self-love.

A Silver Lining:

But our greatest virtue is the capacity for hypocrisy without which virtue would long have disappeared then?

Hypocrisy is a form of homage that vice pays to virtue.

As earlier, one can also slip into an alternative escape hatch: if I can overcome normal pride and go so far as accept these maxims as true for myself even, then I can take pleasure in knowing that such is the extent of my wisdom.

But, it is only pride - masquerading again. There is not even the need to explain this further. There is no escape once you embark on an examination of the basis of our virtues and vices.

We do not like to praise, and we never praise without a motive.

La Rochefoucauld made a permanent contribution to literature with his Maximes: a collection of cutting aphorisms on the vanity of human nature. His perspective is cynical: seeing bad motives behind even the best actions. Or in his opening words: “Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.” And I do not think that one must be a defeated aristocrat in order to see the truth in many of his pronouncements. Here he is his describing me:

One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. The most clever and polite content themselves with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

I often found myself laughing at these aphorisms. So many of them ring true to my experience. And they represent a perspective too rarely expressed in daily life. Selfless action is a deeply appealing concept; and many people wish fervently to believe in it. Yet it is an incontestable fact that most of what we do, even apparently altruistic actions, benefits ourselves in one way or another.

Politicians fight to pass legislation to benefit their constituents, who then return the politician to power; businessmen give their employees a raise, who thus work harder and take less vacation; a friend picks me up from the airport, but he expects me to do something for him in the future; a man returns a wallet he found on the street, is given a reward, and then is lauded on social media. And of course, altruism towards one’s family is the easiest thing to explain this way, since the family is just an extension of the self—psychologically and genetically.

Some may find this way of thinking gloomy and unproductive. But I do think it is important to keep in mind our tendency to act out of self-interest; for, in my experience, it is those who are most attached to the idea of selfless action who most often treat other people badly. It is a dangerous thing to think that virtue is on your side. And, personally, I find it a great relief to see myself as an ordinary animal rather than a moral machine. Self-knowledge requires knowledge of our less honorable motives; and pretending otherwise can lead to a kind of self-alienation: “We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.”

But this dark view of human nature must be tempered in two respects. First, not even La Rochefoucauld thought that all actions were driven by vice. He thinks true virtue is rare, but that it does exist. Second, La Rouchefoucauld often points out that our vices prompt us to act more virtuously than virtue ever could: “The praise bestowed upon us is at least useful in rooting us in the practice of virtue.” Or, elsewhere: “Interest which is accused of all our misdeeds often should be praised for our good deeds.” After all, the actions I described above are all virtuous actions.

And this, for me, is the key insight of La Rochefoucauld’s cynicism: seeing our self-interest, not as inherently bad, but as a kind of neutral force which can be channeled for good or for evil. This insight alone could prevent a lot of needless guilt. More importantly, once we accept this premise, we can more easily shape our lives and societies. For we have discovered the secret of living together: finding arrangement in which self-interest overlaps.

The maxims are so poignant that they almost teeter on cliché. I was thinking of including a bunch of them that I had found personally meaningful, but here is the thing: I don’t want to. I am scared. I don’t want to bare myself that much, seeing as how the maxims that you gravitate toward say much more about you than the content of them or even La Rochefoucauld. Out of the first 400, I think I must have flagged about 150. In that 150, I think I see my life, my relationship with my family, my successful and failed romantic relationships, my career, and all of my shortcomings (and a few more of my shortcomings too). There were some that immediately stood out as having a certain recipient within my life – I was tempted to send it to him/her. I didn’t. There were some that made me pause and think of my own flaws. Then I moved on. Then I came to a maxim about failing to acknowledge flaws even when it’s stripped bare and put in front of you in palatable portions. Then I moved on. You may have an experience like this when you read this. At some point, you will. I guarantee it.

Pick this up. Start reading it. Don’t stop reading it.

"Comment prétendons-nous qu'un autre garder notre secret si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-memes?" (p99) Compare Ben Franklin's improvement:
"Three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
(Poor Richard's Almanac, 70 years after Maxims, 1665.)

"C'est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime." Ahh, Diet, the sacred American program, is an illness.

The very first suppressed maxim, two pages long, applies well to the Trumpster: "Self-esteem is self-love. "Il rend les hommes idolâtres d'eux-mêmes et les rend tyrans des autres si la fortune leur en donne les moyens"(91). "It turns men into idolaters of themselves, and tyrants to others if they gain means to be." Nothing is so impetuous as the desires of self-love, "Rien n'est aussi impétueux que ses désirs."

Funerals: "Les pompe des enterrements regarde plus la vanité des vivants que l'honneur des morts."(96) The pomp of funerals issues more from the vanity of the living than from honoring the dead.
[For a cross-cultural account of funerals, see Dickens, "Medicine Men of Civilization."]
"On n'est jamais si malheureux qu'on croit, ni si heureux qu'on avait esperé."(93) You are never as unhappy as you think, nor as happy as you had hoped.

Non-Supprimeés

"Le monde récompense plus souvent les apparences de mérite que le mérite même."(p59)
US Election, 2016? The world recompenses the appearance of merit more than real merit.

"Tout le monde se plaint de sa mémoire, et personne ne se plaint de son jugement."(Max #89, p.53)
"Everyone complains of his memory; no-one of his judgement," I first heard from my Ph.D. director, Leonard Unger.

"L'accent du pays où l'on est né demeure dans l'esprit et dans le coeur, comme dans le langage," reminds me of the regional accents of England and Italy, but especially of my mid-western wife, from Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin whose former accent betrayed her friendliness to arrogant New Englanders.

"Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui." We all have enough strength to
endure the misfortunes of others, or We find some pleasure in our best friend's misfortunes.

Textes Complimentaire.
"Portrait." LaR includes a self-portrait where he says he has too much chin, and that, though he "possesses his language rather well [!], his passions, especially anger, often intrude so that he doesn't express himself as well as he hoped." Cardinal de Retz, for his part, accuses LaR of "lack of penetration" perhaps because the writer avoids religion as a subject.

"De la Retrait," on Retirement. Why old people don't make friends, not finding many true friends, but also thinking those who have died were truer than any new ones: "Ils deviennent insensibles d'amitié, non seulement parce que qu'ils n'en ont peut-être jamais trouvé de véritable, mais parce qui'ils ont vu mourir un grand nombre de leur amis qui n'avaient pas encore eu le temps ni les occasions de manquer à l'amitié et ils se persuadent aisément qu'ils auraient été plus fidèles que ceux qui leur restent." (137)

Given how nearly sublimely pessimistic La Rochefoucauld's attitude is, I'm not sure what to think about the translator's claim that "it is one of the most deeply felt, most intensely lived texts in French literature."

A selection:

"We all have strength enough to endure the troubles of others." (19)

"Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears." (38)

"In order to succeed in the world people do their utmost to appear successful." (56)

"Everyone complains of his memory, but nobody of his judgement." (89)

"Old people are fond of giving good advice; it consoles them for no longer being capable of setting a bad example." (93)

"Hope may be a lying jade, but she does at any rate lead us to the end of our lives along a pleasant path." (168)

"When our vices give us up we flatter ourselves that we are giving up them." (192)

"Pride refuses to owe, self-love to pay." (228)

"We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those who find us boring." (304)

"We find few guilty of ingratitude while we are still in a position to help them." (306)

"There are few sensible people, we find, except those who share our opinions." (347)

"Our enemies are nearer the truth in their opinion of us than we are ourselves." (458)

"The reason for so much outcry against maxims that lay bare the human heart is that people are afraid of having their own laid bare." (524)

"Nathan "N.R." wrote: "There is nothing worse in the world than someone who has fallen in love."

[Moira]: Nathan, you get the La Rochefoucauld (sp) award for the day."

Great minds have the ability to say much in few words.

In short, the reader’s best policy is to start with the premiss that none of these maxims is directed specifically at him, and the he is the sole exception to them, even though they seem to be generally applicable. After that, I guarantee that he will be the first to subscribe to them, and that he will think them only too favourable to the human heart. That is what I have to say about the work in general.

Deceptively brief and insidiously easy to read . . .

[Self-Portrait by the Author moved to comments due to word limit.]
__________
In the human heart, passions are perpetually being generated—so that the downfall of one is almost always the rise of another.

We are more able than willing; often we imagine that things are impossible because we want to excuse ourselves in our own eyes.

We are never as fortunate or unfortunate as we imagine.

Truth does not do as much good in the world as the appearance of it does evil.

No disguise can long hide love where it exists, or simulate is where it does not exist.

There is only one kind of love; but it has thousands of different imitations.

Love, like fire, is sustained only by constant motion; and it ceases to exist when it ceases to hope or fear.

True love is like visitations by ghosts: everyone talks about such things, but few people have seen them.

Silence is the safest policy for someone who does not trust himself.

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgement.

Everyone speaks well of his heart, and no one dares speak well of his mind.

To draw attention to the fact that you never flirt is itself a form of flirtatiousness.

The mind cannot act the role of the heart for long.

It is as easy to deceive ourselves without noticing it, as it is hard to deceive others without their noticing it.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves from other people, the in the end we disguise ourselves from ourselves.

If we resist our passions, it is more to their weakness than to our own strength.

The only good copies are those that show us the absurdities of bad originals.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from other people.

We have little to say when vanity is not making us speak.

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice over.

There are people with merits who leave a bad taste in the mouth, and people with faults who are likeable.

It is not enough to have great merits; you must also know how to employ them.

The ability to make good use of average talents is an art that extorts respect, and often wins more reroute than real merit does.

The world rewards appearances of merit more often than merit itself.

Vices have a place in the composition of virtues, as poisons have a place in the composition of medicines. Prudence gathers them and tempers them, and puts them to good use against the ills of life.

Only great men can have great faults.

The desire to be seen as clever often prevents us from becoming so.

The person who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks he is.

We often annoy other people when we think we could not possibly annoy them.

Few things are impossible in themselves; we lack the diligence to make them succeed, rather than the means.

There is no less eloquence in a person’s manner, eyes, and tone of voice, than there is in his choice of words.

True eloquent consists of saying all that is needed and only what is needed.

There are some people whose faults become them well, while other people, with all their good qualities, are lacking in charm.

In any profession each person puts on a pretended look and outward appearance to make him seem what he wants people to think him. So we may say that the world is composed only of appearances.

There are people who have the approval of society, though their only merits are the vices useful for the transactions of daily life.

Women often think they are in love though they are not. The business of an intrigue, the excitement produced by a love affair, a natural predilection for the pleasure of being loved, and the difficulty of refusing, convince them that they are being passionate when they are merely being flirtatious.

We are very far from knowing all our wishes.

Moderation has been turned into a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to comfort average people for their lack of fortune and lack of merit.

Sometimes in life there are events that you need to be a little foolish to handle.

If there are men whose absurd side has never been revealed, it is because no one has looked for its properly.

Why is it that we have enough memory to preserve even the slightest details of what has happened to us, but we do not have enough to remind us how many times we have told them to the same person?

We can find ways to cure folly, but we can find none to correct waywardness.

We sometimes think we hate flattery, but what we hate is merely the way it is done.

Women do not know just what flirts they are.

When we are in love, we often doubt what we most believe.

Some faults, properly displayed, shine more brightly than virtue itself

Of all our faults, the one that we tolerate most readily is laziness. We convince ourselves that it stems from all the calm virtues, and that far from completely destroying the other virtues, it merely suspends their activity.

There is a kind of eminence that is not dependent on fortune. It is a certain manner that gives us distinction and seems to destine us for great things; it is a value that we imperceptibly grant to ourselves. By means of this quality we wrest deference from other men; and this is usually what sets us above them, more than birth, honours, or merit itself.

What is least often found in love affairs is love.

The most dangerous folly of old people who used to be attractive is to forget that they are no longer so.

We do not please for long if our minds have only one way of looking at things.

All our passions lead us to make mistakes, but love leads us to make the most absurd ones.

No fools are as annoying as intelligent ones.

Old age is a tyrant that forbids all the pleasures of youth on pain of death.

We never desire passionately what we desire by reason alone.

Through laziness and constancy the mind keeps to what it finds easy and attractive; this habit is constantly limiting our knowledge, and no one ever takes the trouble to extend his mind and lead it as far as it could go.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

Of all our passions, laziness is the one least known to ourselves. It is the most intense and malignant of them all, though its violence is imperceptible and the harm it does is very well hidden. If we carefully consider its power, we shall see that in every situation it dominates our feelings, interests, and pleasures. It is a remora that is strong enough to stop the greatest ships; it is a doldrum that imperils important business more than any reef or even the fiercest storm. The inertia of laziness casts a secret spell over the soul, which suddenly halts our most zealous pursuits and our most stubbornly held resolutions. Finally, to give a true idea of this passion, it must be said that laziness is like a blissful state of the soul, which comforts it for all its losses, and which acts as a substitute for all good things.

When you cannot find peace within yourself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.

How can we expect another person to keep our secret, if we cannot keep it ourselves?

The world is full of pots calling kettles black.

Man is so wretched that, while he shapes all of his conduct to gratify his passions, he keeps groaning incessantly under their tyranny. He can endure neither their violence, nor the violence that he would have to inflict on himself in order to rid himself of their yoke. He is frustrated not only by his vices, but also by the things that would cure them; and he cannot come to terms either with the discomfort of his afflictions or with the task or curing himself.

We always prrefer ourselves to those with whom we intend to live, and we almost always make them conscious of this preference; that is what disturbs and destroys social intercourse.

There is hardly any man who would want to be seen as he really is in every respect.

There is a particular manner that suits each person’s appearance and talents; when we abandon it in order to adopt another, we are always the losers. We should try to discover the manner that come naturally to us and not depart from it, perfecting it as much as we can.

Instead of being what they want to seem, they strive to seem what they are not. Each of them wants to be someone else, and not what he is. They are searching for a demeanour that is beyond them, a mind that is different from their own; they adopt manners and ways of behaving at random; they experiment with them, not realising that what suits some people does not suit everyone, that there are no general rules for manners and ways of behaving, and copies are never good. Yet two men can be similar in various respects without copying one another, if each of them is simply following his own nature; but hardly anyone follows it altogether—we love to copy; we often copy without realising it, and we neglect our own good qualities for alien ones, which usually do not suit us.

Thousands of people with attractive qualities are disliked; thousands of less talented people are liked—because the former want to seem something that they are not, while the latter are exactly what they seem. In short, whatever advantages or disadvantages we may have received from nature, we are pleasing only in so far as we follow the manner, tones, feelings, and ways of behaving that suit our own condition and demeanour, and we are displeasing to the extent that we depart from them.

When we have what we wish, we do not stop wishing. We grow accustomed to everything that we have; the same possessions do not retain the same value, and no longer affect our taste in the same way. We change imperceptibly, without noticing that we have changed. What we have acquired becomes part of ourselves; we would be deeply affected if we lost it, but we are no longer sensitive to the pleasure of retaining it. Our joy has lost its intensity; we seek it elsewhere, no longer in the things that we used to desire so much. This involuntary inconstancy is the result of time; do what we may, time subtracts from our love, as it does from our life—imperceptibly tarnishing each day some of its youth and gaiety, and destroying its true charms.

There is an attractive, lively first bloom in love, which passes away imperceptibly, like that of fruit. That is no one’s fault; it is merely time’s fault. In the early stages, the other person’s appearance is attractive; our feelings are akin; we seek what is pleasant and agreeable; we want to please, because we are pleased, and we try to show that we are capable of setting the highest possible value on what we love. Later, however, we no longer feel what we thought we would always feel; the fire goes out; the charm of novelty is tarnished; beauty, which plays such a great part in love, either decreases or no longer makes the same impression; the name of love remains, but neither the people nor the feelings are still the same; we keep observing our obligations, our of honour, out of habit, and in order to avoid being too aware of our own change. What couples would have fallen in love, if they had seen each other at first as people see each other with the passage of years? And yet what couples could separate, if they could again see each other as they did at first?

There is more pride than kindness* in our reprimands to people who are at fault; and we reprove them not so much to correct them as to convince them that we ourselves are free from such wrongdoing.
----

What men have called friendship is merely social contact, consider ation for one another’s interests, and exchange of favours; in fact, it is simply a transaction in which selflove always expects to gain something.
----

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgement.
----

We acknowledge our faults so that our sincerity may repair the dam age they do us in other people’s eyes.
----

Perfect valour consists of doing without witnesses what you would be capable of doing in front of the whole world.
----

We confess small faults only to convince people that we have no greater ones.
----

Confidence contributes more to conversation than intelligence does.
----

The wish to be pitied or admired is often the main reason that makes us confide in people.
----

When we really are unhappy, we often comfort ourselves by taking a certain pleasure in appearing to be unhappy.
----

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice over.
----

We usually bestow praise only to receive it.

Lilian Tomlin said something like, no matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to keep up. If this jives with your view of humanity, read Rochefoucauld.

The maxims are short and pithy and misanthropic:

Self-love is subtler than the subtlest man of the world.

The moderation of happy people comes from the tranquility that good fortune gives to their disposition.

What is called generosity is most often just the vanity of giving, which we like more than what we give.

We make a mistake if we believe that only the violent passions like ambition and love can subdue the others. Laziness, for all her languor, is nevertheless often mistress: she permeates every aim and action in life and imperceptibly eats away and destroys passions and virtues alike.

Few men are sufficiently discerning to appreciate all the evil they do.

Nothing is so contagious as example, and our every really good or bad action inspires a similar one. We imitate good deeds through emulation and evil ones because of the evil of our nature which, having been held in check by shame, is now set free by example.

I could go on all night...

"Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it."
Maxim 22

"We have more strength than will; and it is often merely for an excuse we say things are impossible." Maxim 30

"Those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things."
Maxim 41

"We have not enough strength to follow all our reason." Maxim 42

"Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like." Maxim 48

"There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skilled men will not draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to their hurt. " Maxim 59

"Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples." Maxim 93

"It is far easier to be wise for others than to be so for oneself." Maxim 132

"No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does." Maxim 269

"We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them." Maxim 437

"Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable." Maxim LXXX

So begins this collection of hundreds of short aphorisms about human nature, most of them 3 sentences or less, which touch on love, war, business, courage, money, death, perception, politics, freindship, vanity, morality, laziness, and hypocrisy. The writer, the Duc De La Rochefoucauld, had a philosophy which linked all human action to people's "self-love".

Cynical, but not in a mean way. La Rochefoucauld was very good at seeing the hidden selfishness in almost any thought, action or belief. And if you read this book, you may start to see it too. Very interesting and highly recommended.

As for the work itself, there were several maxims I really liked. I list some below. I also enjoyed several of his Miscellaneous Reflections (Réflexions diverses), first completely translated in this volume. His reflections on Conversation (RD #4) was the best, an early example of the art of listening and interacting with people rather than pontificating at them and waiting to speak.

“If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people” (#31).

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves from other people, that in the end we disguise ourselves from ourselves” (#119).

“We often do good so that we can do evil with impunity” (#121).

“The glory of great men should always be measured against the means they used to acquire it” (#157).

“When our hatred is too intense, it puts us on a lower level than those we hate” (#338).

“Average minds usually condemn whatever is beyond their grasp” (#375).

“Most friends make us lose our taste for friendship, and most pious people make us lose our taste for piety” (#427).

“We try to pride ourselves on the faults that we do not want to correct” (#442).

“Our enemies’ judgements of us are nearer the truth than our own” (#458).

“When you cannot find peace within yourself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere” (withdrawn after 2nd ed. #49)

630
"Of all human impulsions, the one we know least about is indolence. It is of them all the most vicious and intense, however unnoticed its intensity or concealed its ill effects. If we really ponder its power, we see how at every turn it dominates our thoughts, our concerns, our pleasures: it is the sucking-fish that can stop dead great vessels in their progress; it is a lull more dangerous to great enterprise than reefs or violent storms. The passivity of indolence is a secret spell that suddenly disrupts the most enthusiastic pursuits and most stubborn resolves. Indeed, to give a true sense of this force for harm, one must describe it as an inner transport, the soul's consolation for every hurt and substitute for every blessing."

*Forgot to mention that it's pretty dern sexist at times.

Other authors publishing under this name are:

François de La Rochefoucauld

François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (French: [fʁɑ̃swa d(ə) la ʁɔʃfuko]; 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. It is said that his world-view was clear-eyed and urbane, and that he neither condemned human conduct nor sentimentally celebrated it. Born in Paris on the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court was vacillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.