Jacques Esprit

Born at Béziers, the son of a doctor from Toulouse, he joined his brother (an Oratorian priest) in Paris, where Jacques studied theology and letters from 1628 to 1634.

Paul Pellisson wrote: "He had a happy appearance, a delicacy of spirit, an amiable disposition, playful, and with much facility in speaking well and writing well[1]".

The prince de Conti visited and befriended him, lodging him in his hôtel and giving him 15,000 livres with which to get married.

On his benefactor's death in 1666, he returned to live in his birthplace of Béziers, where he educated his three daughters and edited a single work,[2] La Fausseté des vertus humaines, and it was there that he died.

La Fausseté des vertus humaines went through many editions and was translated into English in London in 1706 as Discourses on the Deceitfulness of Humane Virtues.