Virtue, Happiness and Duclos' Histoire de Madame de Luz

Charles Pinot Duclos' biography dramatizes the evolution from the rigid separation of the aristocratic and plebeian classes in the seventeenth century to the gradual social democratization in the eighteenth. This son of a Brittany merchant from the little village of Dinan rose to social prominence in the aristocratic salon circles of Paris and to literary pre- eminence, as attest contemporary memoirs, the success of his novels, histories and moral writings as well as his official positions ...