ive it up, the rest followed his
example. Madame Scarron checked the licence of the abbe's conversation,
and even worked a beneficial change in his mind.

The joviality of their parties still continued. Scarron had always been
famous for his _petits soupers_, the fashion of which he introduced, but
as his poverty would not allow him to give them in proper style, his
friends made a pic-nic of it, and each one either brought or sent his
own dish of ragout, or whatever it might be, and his own bottle of wine.
This does not seem to have been the case after the marriage, however;
for it is related as a proof of Madame Scarron's conversational powers,
that, when one evening a poorer supper than usual was served, the waiter
whispered in her ear, 'Tell them another story, Madame, if you please,
for we have no joint to-night.' Still both guests and host could well
afford to dispense with the coarseness of the cripple's talk, which
might raise a laugh, but must sometimes have caused disgust, and the
young wife of sixteen succeeded in making him purer both in his
conversation and his writings.

The household she entered was indeed a villainous one. Scarron rather
gloried in his early delinquencies, and, to add to this, his two sisters
had characters far from estimable. One of them had been maid of honour
to the Princesse de Conti, but had given up her appointment to become
the mistress of the Duc de Tremes. The laugher laughed even at his
sister's dishonour, and allowed her to live in the same house on a
higher _etage_. When, on one occasion, some one called on him to solicit
the lady's interest with the duke, he coolly said, 'You are mistaken; it
is not I who know the duke; go up to the next storey.' The offspring of
this connection he styled 'his nephews after the fashion of the Marais.'
Francoise did her best to reclaim this sister and to conceal her shame,
but the laughing abbe made no secret of it.

But the laugher was approaching his end. His attacks became more and
more violent: still he laughed at them. Once he was seized with a
terrible choking hiccup, which threatened to suffocate him. The first
moment he could speak he cried, 'If I get well, I'll write a satire on
the hiccup.' The priests came about him, and his wife did what she could
to bring him to a sense of his future danger. He laughed at the priests
and at his wife's fears. She spoke of hell. 'If there is such a place,'
he answered, 'it won't be for me, for wit