Part 78

De Lagny, who was intended by his friends for the study of the law, having fallen on an Euclid, found it so congenial to his dispositions, that he devoted himself to mathematics. In his last moments, when he retained no further recollection of the friends who surrounded his bed, one of them, perhaps to make a philosophical experiment, thought proper to ask him the square of twelve: our dying mathematician instantly, and perhaps without knowing that he answered, replied, "One hundred and forty-four."

The following anecdotes are of a different complexion, and may excite a smile.

Père Bohours was a French grammarian, who had been justly accused of paying too scrupulous an attention to the minutiæ of letters. He was more solicitous of his words than his thoughts. It is said, that when he was dying, he called out to his friends (a correct grammarian to the last), "Je VAS ou je VAIS mourir; l'un ou l'autre se dit!"

When Malherbe was dying, he reprimanded his nurse for making use of a solecism in her language; and when his confessor represented to him the felicities of a future state in low and trite expressions, the dying critic interrupted him:--"Hold your tongue," he said; "your wretched style only makes me out of conceit with them!"

The favourite studies and amusements of the learned La Mothe le Vayer consisted in accounts of the most distant countries. He gave a striking proof of the influence of this master-passion, when death hung upon his lips. Bernier, the celebrated traveller, entering and drawing the curtains of his bed to take his eternal farewell, the dying man turning to him, with a faint voice inquired, "Well, my friend, what news from the Great Mogul?"

FOOTNOTES:

SCARRON.

Scarron, as a burlesque poet, but no other comparison exists, had his merit, but is now little read; for the uniformity of the burlesque style is as intolerable as the uniformity of the serious. From various sources we may collect some uncommon anecdotes, although he was a mere author.

His father, a counsellor, having married a second wife, the lively Scarron became the object of her hatred.

He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure; but discovered dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of his age than to the gravity of his profession. He formed an acquaintance with the wits of the times; and in the carnival of 1638 committed a youthful extravagance, for which his remaining days formed a continual punishment. He disguised himself as a savage; the singularity of a naked man attracted crowds. After having been hunted by the mob, he was forced to escape from his pursuers; and concealed himself in a marsh. A freezing cold seized him, and threw him, at the age of twenty-seven years, into a kind of palsy; a cruel disorder which tormented him all his life. "It was thus," he says, "that pleasure deprived me suddenly of legs which had danced with elegance, and of hands, which could manage the pencil and the lute."

Goujet, without stating this anecdote, describes his disorder as an acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of his physicians; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together, and made of our poor Abbé a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one of his letters; and who could be in better humour?

"I have lived to thirty: if I reach forty, I shall only add many miseries to those which I have endured these last eight or nine years. My person was well made, though short; my disorder has shortened it still more by a foot. My head is a little broad for my shape; my face is full enough for my body to appear very meagre; I have hair enough to render a wig unnecessary; I have got many white hairs, in spite of the proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the colour of wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and thighs first formed an obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral angle, and at length, an acute one. My thighs and body form another; and my head, always dropping on my breast, makes me not ill represent a Z. I have got my arms shortened as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a word, I am an abridgment of human miseries."

He had the free use of nothing but his tongue and his hands; and he wrote on a portfolio placed on his knees.

Balzac said of Scarron, that he had gone further in insensibility than the Stoics, who were satisfied in appearing insensible to pain; but Scarron was gay, and amused all the world with his sufferings.

He pourtrays himself thus humorously in his address to the queen:--

Je ne regard plus qu'en bas, Je suis torticolis, j'ai la tête penchante; Ma mine devient si plaisante Que quand on en riroit, je ne m'en plaindrois pas.

"I can only see under me; I am wry-necked; my head hangs down; my appearance is so droll, that if people laugh, I shall not complain."

He says elsewhere,

Parmi les torticolis Je passe pour un des plus jolis.

"Among your wry-necked people I pass for one of the handsomest."

After having suffered this distortion of shape, and these acute pains for four years, he quitted his usual residence, the quarter du Marais, for the baths of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. He took leave of his friends, by addressing some verses to them, entitled, Adieu aux Marais; in which he describes several celebrated persons. When he was brought into the street in a chair, the pleasure of seeing himself there once more overcame the pains which the motion occasioned, and he has celebrated the transport by an ode, which has for title, "The Way from le Marais to the Fauxbourg Saint Germain."

The baths he tried had no effect on his miserable disorder. But a new affliction was added to the catalogue of his griefs.

His father, who had hitherto contributed to his necessities, having joined a party against Cardinal Richelieu, was exiled. This affair was rendered still more unfortunate by his mother-in-law with her children at Paris, in the absence of her husband, appropriating the property of the family to her own use.

Hitherto Scarron had had no connexion with Cardinal Richelieu. The conduct of his father had even rendered his name disagreeable to the minister, who was by no means prone to forgiveness. Scarron, however, when he thought his passion moderated, ventured to present a petition, which is considered by the critics as one of his happiest productions. Richelieu permitted it to be read to him, and acknowledged that it afforded him much pleasure, and that it was pleasantly dated. This pleasant date is thus given by Scarron:--

Fait à Paris dernier jour d'Octobre, Par moi, Scarron, qui malgre moi suis sobre, L'an que l'on prit le fameux Perpignan, Et, sans canon, la ville de Sedan.

At Paris done, the last day of October, By me, Scarron, who wanting wine am sober, The year they took fam'd Perpignan, And, without cannon-ball, Sedan.

This was flattering the minister adroitly in two points very agreeable to him. The poet augured well of the dispositions of the cardinal, and lost no time to return to the charge, by addressing an ode to him, to which he gave the title of THANKS, as if he had already received the favours which he hoped he should receive! Thus Ronsard dedicated to Catherine of Medicis, who was prodigal of promises, his hymn to PROMISE. But all was lost for Scarron by the death of the Cardinal.

When Scarron's father died, he brought his mother-in-law into court; and, to complete his misfortunes, lost his suit. The cases which he drew up for the occasion were so extremely burlesque, that the world could not easily conceive how a man could amuse himself so pleasantly on a subject on which his existence depended.