trust intact. This little incident was made much use of at a later day
by the _Philosophes_, and Voltaire worked it up into "Le Depositaire."
From the Bastille, Pellisson addressed to the King three papers in
defence of his chief: "masterpieces of prose, worthy of Cicero,"
Voltaire says,--"_ce que l'eloquence a produit de plus beau_." And
Sainte-Beuve thinks that Louis must have yielded to them, if he had
heard them spoken, instead of reading them in his closet. The faithful
La Fontaine fearlessly sang the sorrows of his patron, and accustomed
"_chacun a plaindre ses malheurs_." He begged to the King for mercy, in
an ode full of feeling, if not of poetry. "Has not Oronte been
sufficiently punished by the withdrawal of thy favor? Attack Rome,
Vienna, but be merciful to us. _La Clemence est fille des Dieux_." A
copy of this ode found its way to the prisoner. He protested against
these lines:--

"Mais, si tu crois qu'il est coupable,
Il ne veut point etre innocent."

Two years of prison had not broken him down to this point of
self-abasement. Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a
radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms? Madame de
Sevigne, Madame de Scudery, Le Fevre, talked, wrote, and spared no
expense for their dear friend. Brebeuf, the poet, who had neither
influence nor money, took to his bed and died of grief. Hesnault, author
of the "Avorton," a sonnet much admired in those days, and translated
with approval into English verse, as,

"Frail spawn of nought and of existence mixed,"

eased his feelings by insulting Colbert in another sonnet, beginning
thus:--

"Ministre avare et lache, esclave malheureux."

The poet escaped unpunished. His affront gave Colbert the chance for a
_mot_,--an opportunity which Frenchmen seldom throw away. When the
injurious verses were reported to the Minister, he asked,--"Is there
anything in them offensive to the King?" "No." "Then there can be
nothing in them offensive to me." Loret, of the Gazette, was not so
lucky. A gentle appeal in his journal for less severity was punished by
striking the editor from the pension-list,--a fine of fifteen hundred
livres a year. Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the
hands of Madame Scudery, a year's allowance to the faithful newsman.

The Government was not ready to proceed to trial until 1664. For three
years the sharpest lawyers in France had been working on the Act of
Accusation. It was