toine, near Paris, he received a severe wound in the head, which for a time deprived him of sight, and was the occasion of terminating his military career. Before he had recovered, the Fronde had fallen before the gold of Mazarin and the arms of Turenne. Condé was driven from France; and as the proclamation of the King's majority appeared likely to put an end to the miserable dissensions which had so long existed, La Rochefoucauld, with the consent of Condé, reconciled himself to the court, and returned to Paris, where he continued to live in the midst of the literary and fashionable society of the time until his death in 1680. His most attached friend was Madame de Lafayette, authoress of the Princesse de Cleves; but he was also intimately acquainted with Madame de Sevigné, (in whose letters repeated mention is made of him,) La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau, and most of the celebrated men of his age. La Rochefoucauld appears to have been a man of most amiable character and of high personal probity; for, amid the various party feelings of the writers of that period, scarcely any thing can be discovered in the accounts they have left which would throw discredit on him. He possessed brilliant powers of mind, but without any regular education; and an easiness of temper, combined, as it generally is, with fickleness and indecision, which is supposed to have led him to engage so constantly in the various intrigues of the time. He has left us an entertaining sketch of himself, which is subjoined, together with another character of him by Cardinal de Retz, his great enemy, and also a character of De Retz, by La Rochefoucauld.
In the leisure which succeeded to the stir of his early life. La Rochefoucauld composed the " Memoirs of his own Times," and the work on which his fame is founded, " Maxims and Moral Reflections." Voltaire's remark on the two
