and to
this day the thought of it is a pleasant one.

I had to consult Dr. Herrenschwand about Madame d'Urfe, so I stopped at
Morat, where he lived, and which is only four leagues from Berne. The
doctor made me dine with him that I might try the fish of the lake, which
I found delicious. I had intended to go on directly after dinner, but I
was delayed by a curiosity of which I shall inform the reader.

After I had given the doctor a fee of two Louis for his advice, in
writing, on a case of tapeworm, he made me walk with him by the Avanches
road, and we went as far as the famous mortuary of Morat.

"This mortuary," said the doctor, "was constructed with part of the bones
of the Burgundians, who perished here at the well-known battle lost by
Charles the Bold."

The Latin inscription made me laugh.

"This inscription," said I, "contains an insulting jest; it is almost
burlesque, for the gravity of an inscription should not allow of
laughter."

The doctor, like a patriotic Swiss, would not allow it, but I think it
was false shame on his part. The inscription ran as follows, and the
impartial reader can judge of its nature:

"Deo. opt. Max. Caroli inclyti et fortisimi Burgundie duds
exercitus Muratum obsidens, ab Helvetiis cesus, hoc sui
monumentum reliquit anno MCDLXXVI."

Till then I had had a great idea of Morat. Its fame of seven centuries,
three sieges sustained and repulsed, all had given me a sublime notion of
it; I expected to see something and saw nothing.

"Then Morat has been razed to the ground?" said I to the doctor.

"Not at all, it is as it always has been, or nearly so."

I concluded that a man who wants to be well informed should read first
and then correct his knowledge by travel. To know ill is worse than not
to know at all, and Montaigne says that we ought to know things well.

But it was the following comic adventure which made me spend the night at
Morat:

I found at the inn a young maid who spoke a sort of rustic Italian. She
struck me by her great likeness to my fair stocking-seller at Paris. She
was called Raton, a name which my memory has happily preserved. I offered
her six francs for her favours, but she refused the money with a sort of
pride, telling me that I had made a mistake and that she was an honest
girl.

"It may be so," said I, and I ordered my horses to be put in. When the
honest Raton saw me on the point of leaving, she said, with an air that
was at once gay