You show a very proper spirit in being anxious about the welfare of a person who is so distinguished, and to whom you owe so much affection." "Can I forget him whom I see everywhere in the story of our misfortunes," exclaimed Bossuet, in his funeral oration over Michael Le Tellier, "that man so faithful to individuals, so formidable to the state, of a character so high that he could not be esteemed, or feared, or hated by halves, that steady genius whom, the while he shook the universe, we saw attracting to himself a dignity which in the end he determined to relinquish as having been too dearly bought, as he had the courage to recognize in the place that is the most eminent in Christendom, and as being, after all, quite incapable of satisfying his desires, so conscious was he of his mistake and of the emptiness of human greatness?
But, so long as he was bent upon obtaining what he was one day to despise, he kept everything moving by means of powerful and secret springs, and, after that all parties were overthrown, he seemed still to uphold himself alone, and alone to still threaten the victorious favorite with his sad but fearless gaze." When Bossuet sketched this magnificent portrait of Mazarin's rival, Cardinal de Retz had been six years dead, in 1679.
Mesdames de Sevigne and de La Fayette were of the court, as were the Duke of La Rochefoucauld and Cardinal de Retz.

La Bruyere lived all his life rubbing shoulders with the court; he knew it, he described it, but he was not of it, and could not be of it.

Nothing is known of his family.

He was born at Dourdan in 1639, and had just bought a post in the Treasury (_tresorier de France_) at Caen, when Bossuet, who knew him, induced him to remove to Paris as teacher of history to the duke, grandson of the great Conde.

He remained forever attached to the person of the prince, who gave him a thousand crowns a year, and he lived to the day of his death at Conde's house.