VALESIANA.

[Adrian de Valois, the author of the Valesiana, was born in 1607. From his great acquaintance with the Greek and Latin poets, and more particularly with everything relating to the history of his country, he was appointed Historiographer of France, a situation which he filled with great ability. The Valesiana contains many valuable detached historical observations, particularly on the works of Du Cange. He has also left behind him a variety of works, all distinguished by an extensive erudition. He died in 1692.]

CLXV. M. DE VALOIS.

I

How thankful I ought to be to Heaven! At eighty years of age I possess all the vigour of youth; I write and read the smallest characters without the assistance of glasses; I have never been subject to stone, to gout, to rheumatism, and, with the exception of an occasional cold of eight days' duration, I scarcely know what it is to be indisposed. My memory is as good as ever. can remember a whole passage, and the place where I have read it fifty years ago. There are but few who can tell the same story, for the mind generally declines with the body at so advanced a period of life. Among my acquaintances, I know only M. Menage who can say as much, and he too has an inconvenience in his lameness, from which I am free. In other points, he is as healthy as myself, and possesses a surprising memory, which

enables him alone to entertain a company agreeably.

I begin, however, to feel one of the inconveniences of age. There are few who have had more friends than I, and now I see only five or six of my old acquaintances left around me. This is the evil of living too long. We remain upon the earth only to survive our friends, our relations, and not unfrequently ourselves.

CLXVI. CHAPELAIN.

Chapelain, received from the Duke de Longueville several donations, and a pension of a thousand crowns for his Pucelle. This lasted a considerable time, till the prince, losing patience at the long delay of the poem, cut off a thousand francs annually from the allowance. He had boarded himself with one of his relations, and whenever he dined or supped abroad, he made a proportional deduction from his board. His relation bore all with patience, knowing he could be no loser by it in the end. During the illness of which he died, he had with him in the house more than 150,000 francs in specie, and his amusement consisted in opening his strong-box, which he had placed near his bed, and examining his money-bags one by one, to see whether all was safe or not. On the day he died, the whole of his bags were ranged round his bed, and M. D, whom I met soon after he expired, said as he came up to me, “Our friend Chapelain has died like a miller, with all his sacks about him."

CLXVII. ST PAVIN.

M. de St Pavin was one of the disciples of Theophile. The cause of his conversion was that on the night of Theophile's death, St Pavin, who

was in bed, heard Theophile on the stair calling him by name in a loud and terrible voice. St Pavin, who knew that Theophile was in the last extremity, was much surprised, and throwing himself out of bed, summoned his valet de chambre, and asked him if he had heard nothing. The servant answered, that he had heard a frightful voice on the stair. "Ah!" said St Pavin, it is Theophile, come to bid me adieu." Next morning a message came to announce that Theophile had died the night before at eleven o'clock, which was the same hour at which the voice had been heard by St Pavin.

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CLXVIII. MONTMAUR.

Professor Mommor (Montmaur) was fond of feasting at other people's expense. He had got admission to the tables of most of the leading men, by occasionally dealing out with a pompous air a few words of Greek and Latin. After eating and drinking his fill, he used to amuse his entertainers by abusing all the learned men who were either alive or dead. Not one escaped. The literary men thought themselves bound to discharge the debt of gratitude, which they owed him, by celebrating him as he deserved. M. Menage was the first to sound the alarm against him. He wrote his life in Latin, and at the end of each chapter inserted a short epigram of five verses, exhorting all the learned to take arms against the common enemy. I was not disposed to be the last to take the field in so agreeable a warfare. I caused two Latin pieces of this professor, the one in prose, the other in verse, to be printed, with notes; and although the two taken together, amounted only to eight pages, I divided them into two volumes. I added

the life which had been written by Menage, and all the Latin and French verses which I could col lect on the subject, to which I subjoined a few Latin epigrams as my own contribution to these testimonia. The book was printed at Paris in 1643, in quarto, with this sounding title, "Petri Montmauri, Græcarum Literarum Professoris Regii, Opera, in duos tomos divisa, iterum edita, et notis nunc primum illustrata, a Quinto Januario Fron tone.' The book is now extremely rare.

CLXIX. SINGULAR CONTRACT OF MARRIAGE.

M. Varillas told us the other day of a very singular circumstance that in the year 1297, in the county of Armagnac, a marriage was entered into for seven years, between two persons of noble rank, with a reserved power of prolonging the term at the expiry of that period, if the parties should be found to suit each other. He told us, that it was farther provided by the contract, that, in case of their separation after that period, the issue of the marriage, male and female, were to be equally divided between the parties, and in the event of there being an odd number, they should draw lots for the supernumerary child. This contract of marriage, ad tempus, is in the Royal Library, and it was one day that M. de Varillas was in the li brary in search of some manuscripts which he wanted, that he laid his hands on it.

CLXX. ABSENCE OF MIND.

M. M- had his head so full of law and court forms, that he frequently met his most intimate friends without speaking to them, or even saluting them. He never was without five or six litigations of his own, and he applied himself to them with such intense ardour, that he almost for

got to eat and drink. This attachment to law used occasionally to throw him into such reveries, that having one day gone into church and taken the holy water to sprinkle it on his forehead, instead of the usual formula, "In the name," &c., he gravely went on," Saving and excepting all right of opposition, and appeal competent to the party." These words he pronounced with a grave and audible voice, to the consternation of all the bystanders.

CLXXI. THE ELEVEN THOUSAND MARTYRS.

There has been, according to the common opinion, a St Ursula, who was a martyr, though the time of her existence is not known. As for the eleven thousand virgins, however, I must be excused if I doubt the whole story. The error, according to the conjecture of the learned Father Simond, arose in this way. The inventors of the story having found in some old manuscripts of martyrology, S. S. Ursula et Undecimilla V. M. i. e. Sanctæ Ursula et Undecimilla, Virgines Martyræ; and taking the Undecimilla V. M. for a contraction of Undecim Millia Virginum Martyrum, have reared up this wonderful romance out of their own mistake. I cannot understand how the doctors of the Sorbonne, among whom there are so many men of ability, should have allowed this host of contraband saints to keep their place in the church, while they had so many of undoubted me rit to choose their list from.

CLXXII. THE DYING BANKER.

M. P called on me one day, at the time when daily regulations were taking place in Paris, with regard to the change of the coinage. He told me he had just been visiting M. de L., a rich