Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, was born at Aix-en-Provence in 1715 and served as an infantry officer, taking part in the Siege of Prague in 1742 and the Battle of Dettingen before ill health ended his career. In 1746 he published a single anonymous volume, Introduction à la connoissance de l’esprit humain, with his Réflexions et maximes appended; Voltaire, who had been corresponding with him since 1743, urged him into print and then toward a revised edition. He died in Paris in 1747 at 31, and is now read alongside La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère as one of the great French moralists — the warmest of the three.