Francois La Rochefoucauld, duke de, prince of Marsillac, a French author, born in Paris, Dec. 15, 1613, died March 17, 1680. He was in boyhood withdrawn from school to enter the military service, and at the age of 16 was engaged as an officer at the siege of Casale. Of a naturally timid, irresolute, and melancholy character, as he himself has recorded, and unfitted to be a political partisan, he was immediately involved in the intrigues which distracted the court. His father was banished to Blois in 1632 for some connection with the revolt of Gaston of Orleans, and he himself shared his exile, being suspected of hostility to Cardinal Richelieu on account of his intimacy with the friends of Queen Anne of Austria. At Tours he met in 1637 the duchess de Chevreuse, then in correspondence with the queen and the Spanish court. He entered with zeal into the intrigues against the cardinal; obtained permission to return to Paris at the moment when the queen, accused of communications with Spain, was subjected to a sort of judicial examination; and, in his devotion to her, accepted her proposal to guide her and Mlle, d'Haute-fort in flight to Brussels. He had made preparations for this purpose, when he was discovered to have favored the flight of the duchess de Chevreuse into Spain, and was thrown into the Bastile. Released after eight days, he went into retirement at Verteuil, where he lived as a country gentleman, at the same time corresponding with the enemies of Richelieu and participating in the projects of Cinq-Mars and De Thou. He returned to the court after the death of the cardinal (1642), and was received with kindness, but, being unrewarded by the queen and Mazarin, showed his resentment by attaching himself to the duke d'Enghien and forming a liaison with his sister, the duchess de Longueville, his devotion to whom for several years was merely a matter of interest and calculation.

In the wars and intrigues of the Fronde he served the party of the parliament, in the defence of Bordeaux (1650), and in the faubourg St. Antoine of Paris, and on the conclusion of peace abandoned the pursuits of ambition for a life of repose and reflection. He described his occupations thus far as a " business for fools and wretches, with which honorable and well-to-do persons should not mingle." To his relations with Mme, de Longueville succeeded the friendship of Mme, de Sable, Mme. de Sevigne, and Mme. de Lafayette; and his house became a resort of those most distinguished for wit and culture, including Boileau, Racine, and Moliere. The first fruit of his leisure was his Memoires (Cologne, 1662; 3d ed., 1664), which are among the most interesting records of the intrigues against Richelieu and of the period of the Fronde. Three years later he published his Reflexions, ou Sentences et maximes morales, a volume of 150 pages containing 360 detached thoughts; the first book, according to Voltaire, written in Europe after the revival of letters in a lively, precise, and delicate style, and which contributed more than any other to form the taste of the French nation.

The fundamental and pervading thought, that self-love is the motive of all human actions, is presented under such various aspects and with so much acuteness of observation, that every maxim is piquant and suggestive, though few of them may be true. Though his philosophy is not metaphysical, but founded on the ways of the world, and though his statements are rarely absolute, but applied only to the usual conduct of the greater number of persons, yet his persistent reduction of virtues into disguised vices justifies Rousseau in pronouncing it a "sad book." The only thing, La Rochefoucauld says, that is really injurious and justly condemned by men, is not vice, but crime. The Maximes passed through five editions in the lifetime of the author, and have been frequently republished. An excellent 174 la rociiefoucauld-liancourt edition, prepared by Gratel-Duplessis, and edited by Sainte-Beuve, appeared in Paris in 1853.