But D'Aubigne wrote a great deal both in prose and in verse; he wrote the _Histoire universelle_ of his times, personal _Memoires,_ tales, tragedies, and theological and satirical essays; and he wrote with sagacious, penetrating, unpremeditated wit, rare vigor, and original and almost profound talent for discerning and depicting situations and characters.
It is the writer which has caused the man to live, and has assigned him a place in French literature even more than in French history.

We purpose to quote two fragments of his, which will make us properly understand and appreciate both the writer and the man.

During the civil war, in the reign of Henry III., D'Aubigne had made himself master of the Island of Oleron, had fortified it, and considered himself insufficiently rewarded by the King of Navarre, to whom he had meant to render, and had, in fact, rendered service.

After the battle of Coutras, in 1587, he was sleeping with a comrade named Jacques de Caumont la Force, in the wardrobe of the chamber in which the King of Navarre slept.

"La Force," said D'Aubigne to his bed-fellow, "our master is a regular miser, and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth." "What dost say, D'Aubigne ?" asked La Force, half asleep.