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XLVI. M. D'USEZ.

COMPLAISANCE.

M. d'Usez was gentleman of honour to the Queen. This Princess one day asked him what o'clock it was. He replied, "Madam, any hour your Majesty pleases."*

XLVII. THE JESUIT.

A Jesuit who had been particularly recommended to the captain of a vessel, was sailing from France to America. The captain, who saw that a storm was approaching, said to him, "Father, you are not accustomed to the rolling of a vessel, you had better get down as fast as possible into the hold. As long as you hear the sailors swearing and blaspheming, you may be assured that there are good hopes: but if you should hear them embracing and reconciling themselves to each other, you may make up your accounts with heaven." As the storm increased, the Jesuit, from time to time, dispatched his companion to the hatchway to see how matters went upon deck."Alas! Father," said he, returning, "all is lost, the sailors are swearing like demoniacs; their very blasphemies are enough to sink the vessel.". "Oh! heaven be praised," said the Jesuit," then all's right."

XLVIII. PROOF POSITIVE.

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M. de having been wounded in the head at the siege of Rochelle, by a musket ball, the surgeons, as they applied the first dressing, told him the wound was very dangerous, and that they saw the brain distinctly. "Ah!" said he, 66 gentlemen, do take out a little of it, wrap it in

A similar story is related of Frederick of Prussia, and it is also introduced by the author of La Fausse Clelie into that work, in another and more ludicrous form.

a cloth, and send it to the Cardinal de Richelieu, for he has told me a hundred times that I never had any."

XLIX. CLASSICAL APPLICATION.

A person meeting another riding, with his wife behind him, applied to him Horace's line"Post equitem sedet atra cura."*

L. MALHERBE.

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Malherbe, at the age of seventy, wishing to revenge the death of his son, who had fallen in a duel with M. D sent a challenge to that gentleman. The friends of Malherbe hearing of it, did all they could to prevent him from fighting, to which he replied, "What have I to fear? The loss could not be so great for me as you suppose. I only hazard a shilling against a pound."

LI. RABELAIS.

Rabelais is not always the inventor of the tales he interweaves with his principal fable. He often borrows them from other quarters, but he embellishes and renders them his own by his manner of narrating them. That of Dodin, and the Cordelier, B. iii. ch. 23, is of this number. The original is to be found in the Latin poems of Nicholas Barthelemi. The following is the exact genealogy of the Ring of Hans Carvel. The inven tion is due to Poggio, the Florentine, who died in 1459. It is the 133d of his Facetiæ, entitled the Vision of Philelphus, for which Rabelais has merely substituted the name of Hans Carvel. It is then to be met with in the eleventh of the Cent Nouvelles, a work which Poggio certainly had not seen, for they were not collected till after the year

• Gloomy care sits behind the rider.
+Imitated in the well-known tale of Prior.

1461, under the reign of Louis XI., in whose presence they are said to have been related while he was residing as Dauphin at Gueneppe, a castle of the Duke of Burgundy, in Brabant. Ariosto is the third who has introduced the tale, at the end of his fifth Satire, and has given it an air of novelty, by the graces which he has added to it. It is also the eleventh of an anonymous collection of novels, published at Lyons in 1555, an imitation and, in fact, a mere modernization of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. Celio Malespini has also introduced the story at page 288 of part second of his Ducento Novelle, printed in 4to, at Venice, in 1609, nearly one-half of which are borrowed, word for word, from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. La Fontaine, in 1665, turned into elegant verse the prose of Rabelais, believing him really to have been the author of the tale. It has been also very elegantly versified in Latin Anacreontics, by La Monnoye himself.

LII. ORACLES.

A person who had some dangerous enemies, whom he believed capable of attempting anything, consulted the Oracle to know whether he should leave the country. The answer he obtained was, "Domine, stes securus;" a reply which led him to believe he might safely remain at home. Some days afterwards his enemies set fire to his house, and it was with difficulty that he escaped with his life. Then recollecting the answer of the Oracle, he perceived, when too late, that the word was not Domine, but Domi ne stes securus.

LIII. HENRY IV.

Henry IV. wishing to lower the pride of a Spanish ambassador, told him that if he had a mind to ride, he would go to hear mass at Milan, break

fast at Rome, and dine at Naples. "Sire," replied the ambassador," at this rate your Majesty might also contrive to hear vespers in Sicily." *

LIV. BOUTS RIMÉS.

Perhaps the most difficult set of rhymes ever given for a Sonnet in Bouts Rimés, is the following. The occasion of the Sonnet was this:—In the year 1683, a lady, whom we shall call Iris, was lamenting the loss of a cat, which had been stolen from her. To console her, the following Sonnet was composed, the rhymes assigned for which consisted entirely of the names of towns and provinces. The invention was new; but although the difficulty was sufficient to dismay an ordinary sonnetteer, the author of the following seems to have very happily surmounted or eluded it.

Iris, aimable Iris, honneur de la

Vous pleurez votre chat plus que nous
Et fussiez vous, je pense, au fond de la
On entendroit de là vos cris jusqu'à

Sa peau fut à vos yeux fourrure de
Ôn eut chassé pour lui Titi + de

Il feroit l'ornement d'un Couvent de

Bourgogne, Philipsbourg; Gascogne, Fribourg,

Pologne; Luxembourg. Cologne ;

Mais, quoi, l'on vous l'a pris ? on a bien pris Strasbourg.

D'aller pour une perte, Iris, comme la
Se percer sottement la gorge d'une

Il faudroit que l'on eut la cervelle à l'

Chez moi le plus beau chat, je vous le dis, ma
Vaut moins que ne vaudroit une orange à
Et qu'un verre commun ne se vend a

LV. CARDINAL GRANVELLE.

Sienne,

Vienne,

Anvers.

Bonne,

Narbonne, Nevers.

Cardinal Granvelle, minister of Philip II. King of Spain, was so exact, that he preserved every

1282.

Alluding to the famous massacre of the French, in

+ Mademoiselle D'Orleans's dog, on whose death the Abbe Cotin composed a madrigal.

letter written to him. He had left in several chests in his residence at Besançon, a prodigious quantity of these letters, in different languages, all noted, quoted, and underlined with his own hand, with copies of many of his answers. After his

death, these valuable documents were placed in a gallery exposed to the rats and the rain; the servants, and the children of the neighbourhood, helped themselves to the papers as they pleased; the maître d'hotel sold six of the chests to a confectioner, and in order to get rid of the rest, they were destined at once to the water-closet. The Abbé Brisot, who had met with some of them accidentally, found means to collect the remainder; and to prevent these from sharing the fate of the rest, he had them bound in eighty volumes. This collection consists of original letters of the Emperors Charles V., Ferdinand I., Maximilian II., Philip II. of Spain, Mary, Queen of Hungary, Eleanora, Queen of France, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, Christiana of Denmark, Duchess of Lorraine, and the two Margarets of Austria, who governed in the Low Countries. The rest is composed of the letters of different ambassadors, with the answers; and lastly, of two large volumes of private letters of the Cardinal to M. de Bellefontaine, his relation, and intimate friend, where the Cardinal displays his whole heart without disguise.

LVI. LATIN VERSE. GUALTIER DE LILLE.

It has been long disputed who was the author of the celebrated verse which has become proverbial,

"Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim.”

It has subsequently been discovered, that it is

D

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