hout you I must have had my
hell in this life.' The priests told him, by way of consolation, that
'God had visited him more than any man.'--He does me too much honour,'
answered the mocker. 'You should give him thanks,' urged the
ecclesiastic. 'I can't see for what,' was the shameless answer.

On his death-bed he parodied a will, leaving to Corneille 'two hundred
pounds of patience; to Boileau (with whom he had a long feud), the
gangrene; and to the Academy, the power to alter the French language as
they liked.' His legacy in verse to his wife is grossly disgusting, and
quite unfit for quotation. Yet he loved her well, avowed that his chief
grief in dying was the necessity of leaving her, and begged her to
remember him sometimes, and to lead a virtuous life.

His last moments were as jovial as any. When he saw his friends weeping
around him he shook his head and cried, 'I shall never make you weep as
much as I have made you laugh.' A little later a softer thought of hope
came across him. 'No more sleeplessness, no more gout,' he murmured;
'the Queen's patient will be well at last' At length the laugher was
sobered. In the presence of death, at the gates of a new world, he
muttered, half afraid, 'I never thought it was so easy to laugh at
death,' and so expired. This was in October, 1660, when the cripple had
reached the age of fifty.

Thus died a laugher. It is unnecessary here to trace the story of his
widow's strange rise to be the wife of a king. Scarron was no honour to
her, and in later years she tried to forget his existence. Boileau fell
into disgrace for merely mentioning his name before the king. Yet
Scarron was in many respects a better man than Louis; and, laugher as he
was, he had a good heart. There is a time for mirth and a time for
mourning, the Preacher tells us. Scarron never learned this truth, and
he laughed too much and too long. Yet let us not end the laugher's life
in sorrow:

'It is well to be merry and wise,' &c.

Let us be merry as the poor cripple, who bore his sufferings so well,
and let us be wise too. There is a lesson for gay and grave in the life
of Scarron, the laugher.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 27: _Coadjuteur._--A high office in the Church of Rome.]

FRANCOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT AND THE DUC DE SAINT-SIMON.

Rank and Good Breeding.--The Hotel de Rochefoucault.--Racine and
his Plays.--La Rochefoucault's Wit and Sensibility.--Saint
Simon's Youth.--Lo