What can you be doing, Ctesiphon, in that remotest part of your rooms, of so laborious a kind as to prevent you from seeing me?  You are filing some bills, you are comparing a register; you are signing your name, you are putting the flourish.  I had but one thing to ask you, and you had but one word to reply:  yes or no.  Do you want to be singular?  Render service to those who are dependent upon you, you will be more so by that behavior than by not letting yourself be seen.  O man of importance and overwhelmed with business, who in your turn have need of my offices, come into the solitude of my closet; the philosopher is accessible; I shall not put you off to another day.  You will find me over those works of Plato which treat of the immortality of the soul and its distinctness from the body; or with pen in hand, to calculate the distances of Saturn and Jupiter.  I admire God in His works, and I seek by knowledge of the truth to regulate my mind and become better.  Come in, all doors are open to you; my antechamber is not made to wear you out with waiting for me; come right in to me without giving me notice.  You bring me something more precious than silver and gold, if it be an opportunity of obliging you.  Tell me, what can I do for you?  Must I leave my books, my study, my work, this line I have just begun?  What a fortunate interruption for me is that which is of service to you!”

[Illustration:  La Bruyere——­633]

From the solitude of that closet went forth a book unique of its sort, full of sagacity, penetration, and severity, without bitterness; a picture of the manners of the court and of the world, traced by the hand of a spectator who had not essayed its temptations, but who guessed them and passed judgment on them all,—­“a book,” as M. de Malezieux said to La Bruyere, “which was sure to bring its author many readers and many enemies.”  Its success was great from the first, and it excited lively curiosity.  The courtiers liked the portraits; attempts were made to name them; the good sense, shrewdness, and truth of the observations struck everybody; people had met a hundred times those whom La Bruyere had described.  The form appeared of a rarer order than even the matter; it was a brilliant, uncommon style, as varied as human nature, always elegant and pure, original and animated, rising sometimes to the height of the noblest thoughts, gay and grave, pointed and serious.  Avoiding, by richness in turns and expression, the uniformity native to the subject, La Bruyere riveted attention by a succession of touches making a masterly picture, a terrible one sometimes, as in his description of the peasants’ misery: