for although it troubles me to be called fool yet 't would much more vex me if a scandall should be raised that I was dead if I were shut up in my grave he might at his pleasure and in safety speak ill of my Courage had I not better then stay in the world that I may be alwaies ready to chastize him when his temerity shall provoke me Infalliably those that advise me to the Tragedy do not consider that if I am the Catastrophe hee 'l laugh at my valour if I kill him people will be apt to think that I sent him out of the world because I durst not stay here whilst he was alive if I take away his sword thay'le say I apprehended his being arm'd if we come off with equall honour to what purpose should we expose our selves to the worst of all dangers which is death and decide nothing Besides although I had Mars his power and could end the Combat to my honour he might neverthelesse brag that he had force't me to commit a great folly No no I 'le not unsheafe to drive your enemy by death far from you or to remove your self from him by it is to fear him For my part I fear not to be or to let him be He thinks it an honour to him that he never stood in fear of the Parques if he 'l have me believe it let him kill himself I 'le consult all the wise men for this threescore or fourscore years and if I and he hath done well I 'le then endeavour to live as many more and repent to expiate my cowardlinesse You 'le think perhaps this proceeding in a man of courage as I am very strange but to speak my mind freely to you Sir I finde that life is so fine a thing that I had rather content my self with this that I enjoy then hazard for a better and get a worse This same Monsieur le Mat amore would it may be dye that he might be quickly out of his pain But I that am more stout endeavour to live a great while that I may run the hazard of being a long time in a capacity to die Doth he think to advance his credit by declaring that he is weary and desires to return to darknesse his first lodging What is he afraid of the Sun poor fool if he knew what a scurvy thing it is to be deceased he would not make so much haste 'T is not bravely done in a man to hazard his life before he is thirty years old because he exposes that that he knowes not but if after that age he ventures it I 'le maintain he 's mad having known it to venture it For my part I like day-light well and love not to sleep under ground because one cannot see there Let him not be puft up though at this refusall for I 'de have him know that I have two or three killingthrusts besides other sleights and I will not fight for fear of discovering them There are a hundred other reasons that make me abhor Duells Yeas I should go into the field and the Sythe would perhaps dispatch me for t'other world among the grasse alasse my creditors wish no better that they may accuse me of banquerout But doth he think if he had taken away my life that he had done with me To the contrary I should by it become more terrible and I am confident in a fortnight after he could not look upon me without being frighted Neverthelesse if he aspires to the honour of destroying me provided I am in good health I permit him to brag in all places that he was my hang-man for if he had killed me the honour would not be great a few Spanish figgs would do as much He fancies perhaps that Nature hath us'd me very ill in denying me courage but let him learn that Nature cannot do us a greater shreud turn then to employ it against Fate and that the least Flea alive is better then the great Alexander dead And in fine that I find my self unworthy to oblige the blessed Torches to weep upon my Scutchons The truth is I love to be told that I have all the qualities of a good wit except that of a happy memory which I cannot away with for some reasons Another thing forbids me fighting too I have writ my Epitaph which hath much wit sharpnesse in it provided I live a hundred years but if I should hazard my selfe and die sooner the jeast would be lost Add to all this that above all things I abhor sicknesse and there is nothing more contrary to health then death Is 't not better then to encourage ones self to become a coward then to be the occasion of so many dysasters so strong in our weaknesse none can see us tremble or look pale but for fear of having too much courage And to thee comfortable Cowardice I vow to rear an Altar and promise to serve thee with so devout a worship that to begin from this very day I dedicate this Epistle to the faint-hearted the stoutest of all your children for fear if I had sent it to some brave fellow he might have thought that I was a man that would serve him because of the four scurvy words that one is obliged to put at the bottom of every Letter I am Your Servant 17. Against a Detractor SIR I Know that so ignoble a Soul as yours cannot naturally abstain from detracting nor is it an abstinence that I would condemn you to The onely courtesie that I ask of you is that you would tear me so softly that I may seem not to feel you By this you may know that I have good intelligence I thank God that he hath given me a soul so reasonable that I do not believe the world in every thing because the world can say all things otherwise I should have applyed to your disease of the splene a more powerfull and solid Antidote than this of discourse Not that I ever expected any very civill actions from those that have lost their humanity but I could not believe that your brains had so generally been shipwrackt upon the Rhetoricall shelfs that you had born in Philosophy a man without a head One would have wondred in truth that in so vast a body your little wit did not lose it self Nor was it very long lived for I have heard some years since that you cannot leave this life but that your miraculous death will make you be canonized Yeas take leave of the Sun when you please you are sure of a line in our Letanies when the Consistory shall hear that you are dead without losing your senses However comfort yourself you 'l not hold out the lesse for that the Deer and the Ravens whose wits are proportionable to yours live four hundred years And if the want of brains be the occasion of long life without doubt you are he that must write Mankinds Epitaph Certainly 't is by reason of the brutish instinct
of your nature that you make choice of gold and pretious stones to defile with your venom Permit me then although you pretend to exempt your selfe from the power that God hath given men over beasts to command you to spew upon something more foul then my name and to remember for I believe beasts of your nature have some kind of remembrance that the Creator gave a tongue to those of your species onely to swallow and not to speak Remember it then 't is the best counsell that you can take for although your weaknesse excites compassion yet the same in Fleas and Lice that disturb us doth not oblige us to pardon them In fine Simulacre of envy leave your biting for although I am not over sensible of an Injury yet I am very severe to punish it nothing could hinder the vertue of a Hellebore which in French is called Tricot which I would chastise you with nay and to shew you that I am a Philosopher a thing which you believe not I would do it with so little animosity that with my Hat in one hand and a good Cudgell in the other breaking your bones I would tell you that I am SIR Your humble servant 18. To Madam***** MADAM IF all men were obliged to send mony as I am faine to do to facilitate the reading of my letters The Balzacks had never writ and the blind would be able to read But what unlesse mine be made cleare by the reflection of some golden Lewises I am sure they appeare Hebrew to you to open the mouth and move the lips in all forms necessary to expresse our language seemes all Arabick to speak French to you one must open ones hand thus my purse is become my onely Organ by which I can explaine to you the hard places of the Bible and render the Centuries of Nostredamus as easie to you as the Pater In fine Madam 't is of you alone that it may with truth be said No mony no Suisser However notwithstanding your humour I easily comfort my self knowing that as long as you change not I shall be sure still to drive out of your Body the divell of avarice more easily with the Crosse of some Pistolls then with holy water or Exorcisms But I am to blame to charge you with this basenesse Contrarywise they are virtuous motives that makes you proceed thus for if you fal oftner under the Cross then the malefactors of Judea 't is because you believe that the Just-ones can ask nothing unjustly of you and that Gold the symbol of purity cannot be given you but with pure intentions besides I think that as you are a good Christian so you are a better subject for that you humble your selfe before those that brings you the Image of our Kings and that you being of an exemplary probity who will wrong no body you are so scupulous in the distributing your favours that you rely more upon the embracement of ten pistolls then of nine this Oeconomie doth not at all displease me for holding my Purse in one hand I am sure to hold your heart in the other That which troubles me is that that Image which you often swore had made so deepe impressions in your heart cannot stay with you three dayes without paying for his lodging but he is turn'd out by head and shoulders for my part I believe you have forgot the definition of a man for all your actions prove that you take me for an Animal donant whereas by the opinion of Aristotle I thought my selfe an Animall rationall but I plainly see that I must resolve to cease to be what I am at that very moment that I cease to feele in my pocket Rectify I pray you this Error that very ill becomes your youth and this Generositie you whereby you become pale for 't is a shame for to take wages of me that am Madam Your servant 19. Of a Dwarf SIR BY the affection I bore you notwithstanding your undesert I have made you worthy of being my Enemy if the Philistines heretofore had not died by the hands of Samson we should not have known now that there had been any Philistines they were beholding to their death for their life and if they had lived ten yeares later they would have died thirty ages sooner thus you in spight of me reape the same glory by your basenesse having compelled me to punish you I know I shall be told that by killing of a Pigmy I shall not add to my fate the substance of a glorious Epitaph But to look uninteressed upon the reverse of the Paradoxe That Marius that in three Combats made a grave for three Nations was not esteemed a Coward for killing the frogs in that marsh wherein he cast himselfe and Socrates by killing the lice that bit him in Prison did not lose the honour of being the prime man in the universe No no little dwarfe do not think your selfe any other endeavour to humble this nothing of yours and believe as an article of faith if you be still as little as you was on your birth day that the heavens permits it to hinder small Evill from becoming great In fine you are no man what a divel are you then you are perhaps a Mommy that some spirit has stolen from the Physitian 's Colledge to fright the world withall nor is this very improbable since the Eyes are the Mirrors of the soul yours is something very deform'd neverthelesse you boast of my friendship O heavens chastiser of heresies punish this with thunder I have loved you then and given up my heart an offering to you it seems then you thought me so foolish as in charity to have given my soul to the devill But 't is not of me alone that you have thus ill spoken the most flattering Elogies that come from you are Satyrs and God himself had not scap'd you if you had known him All things that breathe concern'd in the destruction of Monsters would before this have tempted me to kill you but they have forborn it as being assured that in me alone you had Your Party Your Judge Your Executioner 20. Against Soucidas UDs death master rascall I find that you have the impudence to live notwithstanding you injured me you that signifie nothing in this world and that are at best but a byle in Natures buttocks you that will fall so low if I give over supporting you that a Flea licking the ground will hardly distinguish you from the pavement you in fine so foul and stinking that makes men doubt when they see you whether your mother was not delivered of you backward If you had sent at least and beg'd leave of me for time for a peccavi But without satisfying your selfe whether 't was my pleasure you should see to morrow or die to day You have the impudence to eat and drink as if you were not dead Ha! I vow I will so annihilate you that it shall not be true to say
Mouth the very paper under the words the Criticks mutter that the great noise that you make in the world is no signe of a great wit that Empty vessells sound more then full ones and that perhaps by reason of the Concavity of your empty braine your mouth like to a Grot makes an ill distinguisht Eccho of all the sounds that strikes it But you must comfort your selfe for all this for that man that can hinder envy from biting vertue is yet unborn for I grant as they say that you are no great wit you are neverthelesse a great man what you are able by your very shaddow to black a whole tennis court none heares your stature spoken of but believe that one is a telling a story of a Cedar or a Fir-tree and others that know you more particularly provethat you have nothing of man but the voice assuring us that they have learnt by tradition that you are an Oake transplanted from the forrest of Doone 't is not by my advice that they give this testimony for I have told them a hundred times that t' was not likely that you were an Oake seeing the most learned all agreed that you are but a block for my part I that have been of a longer acquaintance with you maintaine to them that 't is very farre from truth to imagine that you are a tree for although your superior part which by reason of the situation is called your head doth no reasonable nor sensitive function yet I could not believe it to be of wood but I imagine that it was deprived of the use of its senses And because that one humane soul being not large enough to animate from one end to the other so vaste a Colosse nature was forced to leave the upper region desart And indeed is there any body that knowes not that when nature loged that which in others is called wit in your immense body for all her stretching and pulling she could never make it reach to your head your very Members are so prodigious that who considers them thinks you have two Giants hung to the bottom of your belly instead of thighs and your mouth is so wide that I am sometimes afraid that your head will fall into it in truth if t' were an Article of our faith to believe that you are a man I should have strong motives to suspect that to give life to your body they had been faine to put into it the universall soul of the world You must needs be something very great indeed since the whole Community of Broakers are employed to cloath you or else that those people seeking to sell their commodities and not being able to bring all the streets in Paris to the market have laden you with their fripperie that the market may walke about the streets but this reproach needs not trouble you contrarywise 't is very advantagious to you it makes you known to be a publique Person since you are cloathed at the publique charge besides many other things renders you very considerable without adding to them that as the Egyptians judged of their abundance by the thicknesse of the mud of Nilus after her overflow so may we by your good case suppute the number of illegitimate embraces that have been made in your suburbs Well but concerning the Tree I just now compared you to 't is said you are so fruitfull a one that there 's never a day but you bring forth But I know that these kinds of injuries come not near you and that your calumniators when the third coat of the Cards was your Picture durst not offer so many affronts to your face you then wore a blade that would have had satisfaction of such backbiters they would not have accused you of impudence as now they do when you was in a condition to change your colour so often These Sir in a manner are the abuses with which they persecute your lamentable reputation I would make a little longer Apology for them but that my paper being at an end I must be so to Permit me then to take my leave of you without the customary ceremonies for these persons that thus scorn you and whom I have a great esteem for would think that I were a servant to the Jamboncineux's servant if I had said at the bottom of this Letter that I am SIR Your Servant Tambourineux 22. Consolation for one of his friends upon the Eternity of his Father in Law THe Doctors better then I will one day ease you of the life of this person let them but alone their stroaks none can put by You 'l answer me without doubt That he hath already above a dozen times passed by the time of dying that the Parque forgot him and that having gon so far beyond him she is now loath and lasie to come back so far and fetch him No no Sir be in good hope till he hath lived nine hundred years the age of Methusalem But speak to him continually and that scoldingly roar play the devill thunder in the house let every thing be crosse to him and take some course to make him aweary of his life Why Artephius and the Sybill Cumea lived nothing in respect of him He was brought forth before Death was born and that 's the reason death dares not strike him for she 's afraid to kill her father and if this consideration did not hinder her she sees him so weak with age that he would not be able to go into th' other world Besides too I think another thing may be the reason which is that death who sees him do no action of life takes him rathtr for a statue then a living creature and thinks it belongs rather to time or fortune to overthrow him then to him After this Sir I much wonder that you should say that he being ready to close the circle of his daies being arived at that point where he first set forth he 's becomming a child again Ah Sir you jeast and for my part I cannot so much as believe that he ever was one What he a Boy No no he never was or Moses was out in his Calculation of the worlds creation Though if it be permitted us to name every thing so that can hardly die the functions of a child I grant you for he must indeed be more ignorant then a plant that knowes not how to die that which every thing that hath life understands without a Master Oh had he been but known by Aristotle that Philosopher would not have defined Man a rational Animal Those of Epicurus his sect which demonstrate that the Beasts have the use of reason must except this Ah! if it were but true that he were a beast But alas in the order of animated beings he is a little more then a Hartichoke and somewhat short of an Oyster insomuch that but that you think he hath no feeling I should believe him to be that which they call the Sensitive plant Confesse then that you
this step-Mother hath choakt it with contagion See you not how she carries the plague a long with her this disease without a taile at whose taile death hangs in most of the Cityes of the kingdome how she over throwes the Oeconomy of the Universe the Society of men covering with Purples miserable wretches on a dunghill judge you if the fire she hath kindled against us be vehement when one cole of it is sufficient to consume a man These Sir are the Treasures and Benefits of this adorable season by which you thought to have found the secret of the Cornucopia To say truth doth shee not rather deserve Satyrs than Elogies and ought we not almost to hate the other seasons because they are in her Company and do follow and go before her For my part I do not doubt but one day this wicked one wil corrupt all her Companions And indeed we already see that after his example they have their particular waies of maiming us and for the miseries they bring upon us Winter makes us implore St. John the spring St. Mathurin the Summer St. Hubert and Autumne St. Poch for my part I know not what hinders me from procuring my own death for vexation that I cannot live but under their government but chiefly for that this accursed Autumne goes over my head every year to make me mad She indeavours I think to engage her Sisters in her crimes For to conclude Sir big with thunders as we see him would she not perswade us to believe that they altogether compose a monster that barks with the feet she for her part is a ravenous Harpuy that carries Ice in her mouth and fire in her taile who saves her self from an embracement by a deluge and at fourscore dayes old is so passionately in love with Winter for killing us that she dies in his imbraces but that which seemes to me most of all strange is that I have not all this while taxt him with his greatest crime I mean the bloud that for many yeares he hath covered the face of Europe withall I ought to have done it to punish him for that having been prodigall of his fruits to every body else he has not as yet given me one that can say to you after my death I am Sir Your Servant The second Description of the Aquaeduct or Fountaine of Arcueil 5. To my friends the Water-drinkers THis Letter having been lost the Author long after writ another but having almost forgot the former he lighted not on the same fancies Since he found the lost-one and being as he is no small enemy to labour and paines-taking he thought not the subject worthy enough to purge each other Letters from the conceptions that might be found in the other Sirs Stand stand My head is the point of a River I am under at the very fadome without swimming and yet I fetch my breath at ease you may well judge that 't is of Arcueil that I write you The water here led in triumph marches in files by a regiment of stones they have rear'd a hundred Portalls to receive her and the King thinking that she was weary with comming on foot so farre caused her to be usher'd lest she should fall These extreame honours hath made her so proud that she would not goe to Paris if they did not carry her thither Having got cold with lying so long upon the ground she hath raised her self a higher bed and 't is held by tradition that this Aquaeduct seemed so fair and stately to her that she came thither of her selfe to walke for recreation in the mean time she 's shut in with foure walls Is it perhaps that she hath been convicted of having formerly been in the Sea's company in some shipwrack It must be so for here Justice is so severe that the very Fountains are made to walke up right and strait and the aire of the Citty is so contagious that she cannot come neer it without getting the Stone Notwithstanding these obstacles she hath such an itch to see it that she rubbs her selfe for halfe a mile together against the Rocks she thinks long till she counterfeits Hippocrene among the Muses of the University She cannot hold her water for longing to see how from the mountaines of Rongy in the aire she pisses to the suburbs of St. Germain she receives order from his Highnesse Royall of what visits she is to make And for all the private threats that she murmurs out by the way how formidable soever she appeares Luxembourgh hath no sooner spied her but with one look only she disperses her on every side Could Love indeed joyn Arcueil and Paris by a stronger bond then that of life This Reptile is a bit for the Kings mouth 'T is a great sword that makes the water-bearers put on their belt 't is an immortall Snake that shrinkes into her skin still as she comes out on 't 't is an Artificiall impostume that cannot be broake without indangering Paris's life 't is a Pye whose sauce has life 't is a Bone whose marrow walks 't is a liquid Serpent whose tail goes before his head In fine I think she is resolved to do nothing here but things that are impossible to be believed She goes strait because shee 's arched and bent She corrupts not although she be in the grave shee 's alive under ground She goes on the top of those valleys whose doores are open she hits her way in the darke and runs withall her force without falling Wel Sirs after all these miracles deserves she not to be Canonized at Paris under the names of St. Cosme St. Benoist St. Michell and St. Severin Who would think in the mean time that a foot 's bredth measures the destiny of a whole people By this you may know what honour 't is to you that I who can when I please stop that liquor which quenches the thirst of so many honest men at Paris and that can every day be served before the King should yet descend so low as to stile my self Sirs your Servant De Bergerac 6. Another on the same subject Sirs A Miracle a Miracle I am at the bottom of the water and yet cannot find drink I have a whole River upon my head and yet I have not lost my footing In fine I find my self in a Country where fountaines flye and where Rivers are so dainty that they go over bridges for fear of wetting themselves 'T is no Hyperbole for if you consider the great Arches upon which she marches in triumph you would think that shee 's got upon Scaffolds to see the further and take notice in what places in Paris she 's most needfull they are like so many Bowes from which she lets flye a thousand silver liquid shafts against thirst But Now she was bare briched upon the ground And at present there she walkes upon stately Galleries she carries her head even as high as the Mountains And do not believe that her
with the braine of all men but they are farre enough from granting that you imagine They maintaine that 't is not possible that you can so much as speake or if you do 't is as did heretofore the Sibill's grot that spoke without knowing it but although the fumes that come from your Mouth your bung I would say are as capable to intoxicate as were those that were exhaled from that grot I see nothing in it that is Propheticall that makes me think that you are at most but the seaven sleepers den that snore through your mouth But good gods what i' st that I see you seeme more swel'd now then ordinary Is it anger then that doth it Already your legs and your head is so united by their extention to the Circumference of your Globe that you are now but a bundle you fancy perhaps that I jeast in truth you guesse right and the miracle is not great that a bowle should hit the Mark. I can besides assure you that if a basting could be sent in writing you would read my letter with your shoulders and do not wonder at my proceeding for your vast Extent makes me so really believe you the earth that I would willingly plant some timber upon you to see how it could beare Do you think then because a man can fully beate you in 24 houres and that he cannot in a day Chine but one of your Omoplates I will trust to the Hangman for your death No no I my self will be your Parque and there had already been an end of you if I were well delivered from the splene to cure which the Physitians have ordered me four or five takings of your Impertinencies But as soon as I am become banquerout of pleasure and that I am weary of laughing rest assured that I will make you no longer count your self amongst those things that live Adieu 't is done I would have ended my Letter as I use to do but you would not for all that have believed that I was your thrice humble obedient and affectionate therefore great bursten-gut Servant to the Bedstraw 24. Against Scarron SIR YOu demand of me my judgment of this Fox to whom those grapes seem too green that he cannot reach I am of opinion that as one arives to the knowledge of a cause by its effects so to know the strength of this mans wit or his weaknesses we need onely cast an eye on his productions But I am out to say productions for he never could do otherwise then destroy witnesse the god of the Roman Poets whom at this time he makes rave I 'le confesse to you then concerning that in which you demand my opinion that I never saw a ridiculous thing more serious nor a serious more ridiculous then his The people approve of him by that you may conclude 'T is not but that I esteem his judgment however in having chose to write a mock-style for to write as he doth is to mock the world his companions may if they please to heighten his glory say That he treads in a path wherein none hath gone before him that he hath had no guide I grant it But let them lay their hands upon their consciences say true is it not easier to make Virgiis Aeneids like Scarron then to make Scarrots Aeneids like Virgil For my part when I see him to prophane Apollo's holy art me-thinks I hear an angry frog croak at the foot of Parnassus You 'l say perhaps that I use this Author something ill to reduce him to the Insects but since you oblige me to draw his picture to do it I cannot proceed otherwise having never seen him then to follow that Idea which I have received of him from all his friends There is not one but confesses that he hath left off being man without dying and is nothing else but form But by what shall we know him he goes contrary to the common opinion and he is arrived to this point of bestiality to banish points of wit and fancy from compositions when reading he unfortunately lights upon one to see the horrour he is surprised with one would think that his eyes are lighted upon a Basilisk or that he hath trode upon an Aspe If the earth had never known other points then the pricks of Thistles Nature hath so form'd him that he would not have dislik'd them for between you and I when he seems to be sensible that a point pricks him I cannot but believe that he doth it to perswade us that he is not insensible But whether he be so or no I 'de let him alone if he did not erect Trophies to stupidity support them by his example How this good Gentleman would have one write nothing but what one hath made as if we now spoke French onely because heretofore they spoke Latine or were not reasonable till we are moulded We are then much obliged to Nature for not making him the first man for without doubt he would never have spoke if he had heard braying first 'T is true to make his conceits understood he makes use of a kind of Idiotisme that makes the world wonder how the twenty four Letters of the Alphabet can meet in so many fashions and say nothing After this you 'l ask me what judgment I make of this man that saying nothing speaks continually Alas Sir none at all unlesse it be that his disease must needs be well rooted in him that 't is not yet cured although he hath fluxed at the mouth above fifteen years But concerning his infirmity 't is believed as a miracle of this holy man that he had no wit till he was brain-sick that had she not troubled the oeconomy of his temperature he was cut out for a great fool and that nothing can blot out his name which he hath plaister'd on the front of memory since Mercury and Larchet could not do it Those that jeer him add that he lives by dying because that the Neapolitan drogme which hath cost him dear and raised him to preferment in the number of Authors he sells every day to the Stationers But let them say what they will he 'l never dye with hunger for provided his chair be not defective I am very confident he 'l rub out well enough till death if he had as well secured his Poems against the fury of oblivion they would not be in danger as they are to be inhumed in blew paper nor is there any likelyhood that that paltry-style and those tales of Robin Hocd will eternize Scarron so many daies as the history of Aeneas hath done Virgil Me-thinks he 'd do a great deal better to get an Order from the Court commanding all fish-wives to speak the same Gibberish lest introducing new â—rebus's instead of the old ones before four months be at an end one be doubtfull in what language he hath write But alas in this earthly habitation who can promise himself eternity in mens good opinions when it
words for ten pounds is more then the skin of a horn'd beast can be worth From all these and from all the other things that I writ to you t'other day you may conclude little Doctor that the Destinies command you by a Letter that you content your self to shipwrack the wits of the youths of Paris against the seats of your School and not think to domineer and play the Regent over him that doth acknowledge the Empire neither of Monet nor The saurus In the mean time you gore me with sharp horns and resuscitating in your memory the thoughts of your cruelty you compose of it a Romance of which you make me the Heros Those that will excuse you lay the fault on Nature that brought you forth in a Countrie where beastialitie is the first patrimony and of a race that the seven deadly sins hath composed the historie of After this in troth I am to blame to take it ill that you endeavour to attribute to me all your crimes since you are of age to give away your wealth and that sometimes you seem so transported with joy in reckoning up the debauched persons of this age that you forgot your own self 'T is not necessary that you ask who told me of this stupid ignorance that you think secret you that glory in publishing it and bellow it out so loud in your School that 't is heard from the Orient to the Occident I advise you however Master Picar henceforward to change the subject of your Haranges for I will no longer see you hear you nor write to you and the reason is this That God who possibly is upon tearms of pardoning my sins would not forgive me if I should have to do with a beast 29. Against Lent SIR YOu may canonize Lent as long as you please For my part 't is a holy-day that my devotion will never celebrate I look upon it as a great gash in the body of the year through which Death introduces himself or as a great Caniball that lives upon mans flesh whilst we eat nothing but roots The cruell Tyrant is so affraid of failing to destroy us that having learnt we are to perish by fire the very first day of his reign he puts the world into ashes and afterwards by a deluge to exterminate the embracements remainders he brings a tyde of fish into our very Cities The Turk that told the Grand Signior that upon a certain day of the year all the Frenchmen became frantick and that a certain powder being applyed to their forehead made them come to themselves again was not of my opinion for I 'le maintain that they are never wiser then upon that day And if they object their Mascarades I answer That they disguise themselves that Lent who looks after them may not find them and indeed he never carches em but the next morning a bed when they have pluckt off their visors The Saints who being inspired by God are wiser then we disguise themselves likewise but they unmask not till Easter day when the enemy is gone 'T is not that this Barbarian hath pitty on us that makes him depart No no but finding us so alter'd that he himself doth not know us he retires thinking he hath mistaken us for some others You see already that our armes lose their flesh our cheeks fall our chins grow sharp our eyes hollow the paunch-belly that you know begins to see his knees human Nature looks hideously To be brief the very Saints in our Churches would fright us if they did not hide themselves And after this doubt whether Martyrs have escap'd the wrack the furnace and boyling oyle when in six weeks we see so many persons in good health after they have appeased the fury of six and forty executioners their presence alone is terrible And I fancy Shrovetide that great day of Metamorphosis a rich elder brother that bursts his belly whilst the poor younger ones dye hunger-starv'd 'T is not but that the law of Fasts is a well invented stratagem to exterminate all the souls out of a Republick that are like to come to the fire But I think these fish-daies are to blame to kill so many Calves in a season in which they permit them not to be eaten and to permit March to blow such bad winds from the quarter of Rome that they make us eat but half what we would do Why Sir there is not one Christian whose belly is not a Sea of frogs or a Kitchen-garden I think upon the carcase of a man that dies in Lent one may see sprout out beet roots skerrets turnips and carrets But to hear our Preachers you would think that at this time we ought not to be flesh What is it not enough that this lean Tyrant ruines our bodies would he corrupt our souls too he hath so perverted our precepts that we may now communicate to women our temptations to the flesh without offending them or god almighty Are not these crimes for which it ought to be expel'd out of well-govern'd Kingdoms But 't is not onely in our daies that he rules with so much insolence for our Saviour died in the first year of his reigne The whole machine of the world was like to have vanisht and the Sun who was not used to these long fasts faild the same day and lost his complexion would never have recovered his weaknesse if they had not presently made an end of Lent O thrice and four times happy is he that dyes on a Shrove-tuesday he is almost the onely man that can boast that he lived a year without Lent Yeas Sir if I were assured to abjure the heresy every holy-Saturday I would turn Huguenot every Ash-wednesday Our reformed fathers may well pray to God that the Pope may never happen to be my prisoner of war for although I am a Catholick good enough yet I would not set him at liberty till he had for his ransom restored all the flesh-daies he hath taken from us I would oblige him likewise to degrade March from the number of the 12 months of the year as being the Ganelon that betraies us to a great deal of hardship 'T is to no purpose to say that he is not altogether against us since either with his head or his heels he alwaies dips in the dripping-pan that he onely frees himself from the Megrim by the Cramp and in fine that Lent is his Gibbet where every year he finds himself hung either by the neck or by the heels He is the principall cause of the mischiefs that our enemies do us because 't is he that lodges them whilst they persecute us and these persecutions are not imaginary if the earth did not stop the mouths of the dead I know what they would say well enough And I think that Easter was purposely so placed at the end of Lent because they that Lent had kill'd could not but want a resurrection Wonder not then that so great a part of the
Chirurgion would run mad rather then not kill with his lint all those that are shipwrackt in his hands and send them to sleep with their fathers Let us conclude then Sir that sometimes they send death and his fyth buried in a grain of Mandragon otherwhile liquified in a Serringe sometimes upon the point of a Launcet that sometimes with a Julip they make us die in October and in fine they usually cloath their poisonings in so fine tearms that not long since I thought that mine had obtained for me of the King an Abbey in commendum when he told me that he was a going to give me a Benefice for the belly Oh! how glad I should have been if I could have found some way equivocally to have beaten him as the country-wench did who being asked by a Mountebank whether she had any Poulxe which in French signifies also Lice she answered him with boxes on the ears and good scratches that he was a fool and that in all her life she never had neither Lice nor Fleas But their crimes are too great to be punish'd onely by equivocation let us summon them to appear before a Justice in the name of the dead Amongst all mankind they 'l not find a Lawyer thre's not a Judge that cannot convince some of them of having killed his father and amongst all those they have practised that they have laid in the Church-yard there is not a head that doth not grind his teeth at them should they devour them there were no fear that the tears shed for their losse would enlarge the Rivers None weeps at the death of such people but those that lament that they lived so long They are so beloved that every thing that concerns them is so even their very death as if they were other Messias's for they die for the good of Mankind But good gods is not this my evill Angel again ah 't is the same I know him by his gown Vade retro Satanas Champagne bring me the holy-water pot Graduated devill I renounce thee O impudent Satan do you not come to give me another purge Have mercy Lord 't is a Huguenot devill he doth not care for holy-water Oh! if I had but strength enough to break his pate But alas that which he hath made me take is so well turn'd to nourishment that by taking a great many consumed broths I have quite consumed my self Come quickly then to my help or you 'l lose SIR Your most faithfull Servant D. C. D. B 34. Against a coward Bragadocio SIR THe Prophet lies cowards do not die at your age besides your life is not considerable enough to be of those that the heavens takes care to mark the duration of Those of your scantling may expect to die without a Comet as well as a great many more that are like you which Nature asleep brings forth every day without taking notice of I have been told in many places that you brag that I had a designe to kill you Alas my friend do you think me so foolish as to undertake an impossibility Ha! pray tell me to kill a man suddainly that hath neither brain nor heart in what place must I strike him I 'le ne'r be seen if your way of living impenitrable by injuries makes not the world believe that you have undertaken to try how long a man without a heart can naturally subsist These reflections were considerable enough to oblige me to make you feel the wait of a cudgell But the long continuance of your Ancestors whose antiquity you proclaim will hold my hand I find indeed some likelyhood that it may be so since a famous Genealogist made it clearly appear to me that all your titles of nobility were lost in the Deluge and that he proved to me that you are as evidently a Gentleman as the country-fellow did to King Francis the first when he told him That Noah had three sons in the Ark and that he was not certain from which he was descended But however I should have guess'd that you were of a good House for no body can deny but yours is as new a one as any there is in the Kingdom If you 'l believe me then take a Coat of Arms let the Heraulds be offended if they will you shall give these Vous porterez de gueules a deux felles chargees de cloux sans numbre a la vilenie en caeur un Baston Brisc sur le chef But as they give not Armes to a Peasant that one would make noble till he hath rendred himself worthy of it by performing some warlike act I stay for you where this lackey will conduct you that according to the prowesse of chivalry that you shall make appear I may clap a pair of spurs on you You need not fear to be the sacrifice for if fate waits for you any where 't is rather in the stable than in the bed of honour or upon the breach of a wall And for my part I that understand a little in Physiognomy I engage you my word that you are not destin'd to die in the field unlesse it be by a surfiet of grasse Consult upon it however all the powers of your soul that I may arm my self quickly with a sword or that which they call in French a Baston End of the Satyricall Letters 35. A Dreame SIR THat vision of Quevedo which yesterday we read together left so many deep Impressions in me of the pleasant things it represented that the last night I dreamt I was in hell but that hell seem'd to me very differing from ours the variety made me believe that they were the Elisium fields and indeed I had not gone farre but I saw the lake Avernus which I knew by the Greeks and the Romans descriptions of it I saw Acheron and the flood Lethe the vigilant Cerberus the Gorgons the Furies and the Parques Ixion upon his wheele Tityus devoured by a vulture and many other things that are amply described in the Mythology Having gone a little further I met divers persons cloathed in the Greek and the Roman fashions the one speaking Greek the others Latin and I perceived others imployed in leading them to severall apartments they all seem'd very sociable which made me put my selfe into their Company I remember I accosted one and after many other discourses having told him that I was a stranger he answered me that I then was come at a good time for that day the dead that have complained that they are ill associated are all to change their lodgings and that if I were curious I might have the pleasure of seeing it he afterwards very courteously proffered me his hand and I gave him mine We go continued he into the Hall where order is taken for the parting those that have a mind to leave me another and lodging them with others we shall have the Convenience to see at ease without tyring our selves how every one will behave himselfe to make his cause
much ashamed to have a Salamander for your lover and be troubled to see burn in this world Madam Your Servant 6. Letter Madam I Have received your magnificent Bracelets that seemed to me very proud to wear your characters You need not fear after this that a prisoner held by the arms and by the heart can make an escape from you I confesse I should have suspected your present because that there alwaies goes hair and characters into the making up of charms But you having so many more noble waies of killing 't is not likely I should suspect you of witchcraft besides I should be to blame to withdraw my self from the secrets of your Magick it being not possible for me to escape my Horoscope that is agreed with you of my sad dysaster Add to these considerations that 't will be much more for her advantage if it comes by some supernaturall means and if it be caused by a miracle I believe Madam you think all this is jeasting well then let us be serious tell me in your conscience do you not think that you have gained a heart at a cheap rate since it cost you but half a dozen blowes By my faith if you find any more at that price I would advise you to take them for haires will sooner grow again in the head then hearts in the breasts But did you not cunningly choose to make me a present of hair to explain to me in Hierogliphick the insensibility of your heart No I esteem you more generous But how ill soever you intend I so confound in my joy every thing that comes from you that the hands that strike me or stroak me are alike welcom provided they be yours and the Letter that I send to you is a proof of it since it is onely to give you thanks for tying my arms for drawing me by the hair and by all this violence for having made me Madam Your Servant 7. Another Letter Madam I Do not onely complain of the mischief that your fair eyes have been pleased to do me but likewise of a more cruell torment that I suffer by their absence You lest in my heart when I took my leave of you a tyrant that under pretence of being your Idea takes upon her a power over me of life and death nay she enhaunses tyrannically upon your authority and goes to this excesse of inhumanity to tear open those wounds that you had closed up and to make new ones in those old ones that she knowes cannot heal Let me know I beseech you when that Astre that was eclipsed onely for my sake will come and dissipate the clouds of my afflictions Have you not enough to exercise that constancy to which you promised victory Did you not swear to me when you took your last journey that all my faults were wiped out that you would forget them for ever but me never O sweet hopes that are vanished with the aire that framed them Hardly had you ended these deceitfull words shed some perfidious tears and sent forth artificiall sighs with which your mouth and your eyes belyed your heart but fortifying some cruelty that yet lay hid in you you doubled your kindnesses that you might eternize in my memory the cruell remembrance of your favours which I had lost But you went further you fled from those places where the sight of me would perhaps have been capable to have moved your pitty and absented your selfe from me in my sufferings as the Kings that abandon those places where criminalls are punished for fear of being importuned for a pardon But to what purpose so many precautions Madam you know too well the power of your wounds to be afraid of their cure The Physick that hath spoke of all maladies hath said nothing of that which destroyes me because she spoke of them as being able to deal with them but that which the love of you hath begot in me is incurable for how is it possible to live when one hath given away ones heart which is the cause of life Return it me then or send me yours in the place of my own otherwise in the condition I now am to end my life by a bloody and cruell death you 'l add to the conquest of your eyes too sad a destiny if the Victim that I immolate to you be found without a heart I conjure you then once more since you need not have two hearts to live to send me yours that offering to you a compleat sacrifice she may make both your love and your fortune propitious to you and hinder me from making an ill end although I should tell you improperly at the bottom of my Letter that I am and ever will be even in the other world Madam Your faithfull Slave 8. Letter Madam YOu complain that you discovered my passion from the very first moment that fortune obliged me with the sight of you But you to whom your glasse when he shewes you your image tells that the Sun hath all his light and ardour the very first instant that he appears What reason have you to complain of a thing that neither you nor I could hinder 'T is as essentiall to the splendour of the rayes of your beauty to illuminate bodies as 't is naturall to mine to reflect towards you that light which you bestow upon me And as it is in the power of your consuming looks to kindle a disposed matter so is it in that of my heart to be consumed by it Do not complain then Madam unjustly of this admirable concatenation by which Nature hath joyned by a common society the effects to their causes This unexpected foresight is a continuance of the order that composes the harmony of the Universe and 't was a necessity known at the birth day of the creation of the world that I should see you know you and love you But there being no cause but tends to some end the very time that we are to unite our selves is now come 'T were in vain for you and I to attempt against our destinies But admire the course of this predestination 't was a fishing that I met you the lines that you looking upon me cast did they not declare to you my being taken And although I had scap'd your lines could I have saved my self from the baits hung at the lines of that fair Letter that you did me the honour to send me some daies after every obliging word of which was composed of divers characters onely to charm me and I received it with such respects as I would expresse by saying that I adored it if I were capable of adoring any thing besides your self At leastwise I gave it many tender kisses and laying my lips to your dear Letter I fancyed that I kissed your excellent wit that framed it My eyes took a pleasure in often passing over those characters that your pen had made and grown insolent by their good fortune they attracted my whole soul to them and by fixed looks stuck there to unite it self with those draughts of yours Could you have thought Madam that with one sheet of paper I could have made so great a fire 't will never go out though till my dayes are extinguish'd for if my soul and my passion parts themselves in two sighs at my death that of my love will go out last I 'le conjure la Gonie the faithfullest of my friends to repeat to me that beloved Letter and when he shall be come to the end of it where you humble your self so much as to say that you are my servant I 'le cry out till death Ah! that cannot possibly be for I my self have alwaies been Madam Your most faithfull most humble and most obedient Slave De Bergerac FINIS The Errors of the Presse HIr her for him his in the 23 line of the 8 page Had for have in the 25 line of the 9 page Little for brittle and in the 3 line of the 12 page Hir for him in the 17 line of the 14 page Roch for Poch in the 5 line of the 16 page He for she in the 10 line of the 16 page He for she in the 12 line of the 16 page He for she in the 19 line of the 16 page Bottom for fadom in the 2 line of the 17 page For for to in the 11 line of the 18 page Walls for valleyes in the last line of the 18 page Hostesse for Hospitall in the 26 line of the 23 page Mosse for Messe in the 13 line of the 24 page Matter for Muster in the 17 line of the 26 page Set for sat in the 4 line of the 29 page Seemes for Lances in the 4 line of the 29 page To shew his innocency in line 21. page 30. O gods for O good in the 13 line of the 36 page Leave out with in the 5 line of the 39 page They for he in the 8 line of the 47 page Leave out of in the 11 line of the 52 page Tambocineux's for Jambonomeux's in the last line of the 82 page Doe for die in the 6 line of the 84 page Makes for spakes in the 25 line of the 84 page After for often in the 15 line of the 85 page There for them in the 16 line of the 88 page Cushonet for Cushomet in the 28 line of the 88 page Lately for safely in the 27 line of the 91 page Cannot for Can in the 32 line of the 93 page Read for made in the 3 line of the 96 page Truths for troubles in the 27 line of the 98 page No for that the in the 27 line of the 105 page Roost for roof in the 3 line of the 111 page She for he in the 23 line of the 111 page Others for other in the 20 line of the 139 page That a Republick for the particulars of a Republick in the 23 line of the 145 page Read for head in the 17 line of the 157 page