is manuscript,
read several pages, and when he observed that they laughed, he said,
"Good, this goes well; my book can't fail of success, since it obliges
such able persons as yourselves to laugh;" and then remained silent to
receive their compliments. He used to call this _trying on his romance_,
as a tailor _tries_ his _coat_. He was agreeable and diverting in all
things, even in his complaints and passions. Whatever he conceived he
immediately too freely expressed; but his amiable lady corrected him of
this in three months after marriage.

He petitioned the queen, in his droll manner, to be permitted the honour
of being her _Sick-Man by right of office_. These verses form a part of
his address to her majesty:

Scarron, par la grace de Dieu,
Malade indigne de la reine,
Homme n'ayant ni feu, ni lieu,
Mais bien du mal et de la peine;
Hopital allant et venant,
Des jambes d'autrui cheminant,
Des sieunes n'ayant plus l'usage,
Souffrant beaucoup, dormant bien pen,
Et pourtant faisant par courage
Bonne mine et fort mauvais jeu.

"Scarron, by the grace of God, the unworthy Sick-Man of the Queen;
a man without a house, though a moving hospital of disorders;
walking only with other people's legs, with great sufferings, but
little sleep; and yet, in spite of all, very courageously showing a
hearty countenance, though indeed he plays a losing game."

She smiled, granted the title, and, what was better, added a small
pension, which losing, by lampooning the minister Mazarin, Fouquet
generously granted him a more considerable one.

The termination of the miseries of this facetious genius was now
approaching. To one of his friends, who was taking leave of him for some
time, Scarron said, "I shall soon die; the only regret I have in dying
is not to be enabled to leave some property to my wife, who is possessed
of infinite merit, and whom I have every reason imaginable to admire and
to praise."

One day he was seized with so violent a fit of the hiccough, that his
friends now considered his prediction would soon be verified. When it
was over, "If ever I recover," cried Scarron, "I will write a bitter
satire against the hiccough." The satire, however, was never written,
for he died soon after. A little before his death, when he observed his
relations and domestics weeping and groaning, he was not much affected,
but humorously told them, "My children, you will never