that I hope they will not suffer my discourse to be troublesome to you This graduate notwithstanding tells me that t' will be nothing and at the same time protests to every body else that I cannot escape without a Miracle Their presages however although fatall do not at all startle me for I know well enough that the cunning of their trade obliges them to condemn all sick persons to death to the end that if any one escapes his recovery may be imputed to their powerfull remedies and if he dyes that every one may cry him up for an Able man and say that he knew well enough what would become of him But admire a little the Impudence of this hangman the more I find the ill increase that his Physick is cause of and the more I complaine of some new distemper the more he rejoyces and sayes nothing but All the better When I tell him that I am fallen into a swoonding Lethargy that held me almost an hour he answers 'T is a good signe When he sees me in the Clawes of a bloody flux that teares me in peeces 't is well sayes he this is as good for you as letting Blood When I grow sad to feel an excesse of cold to take hold of all my extream parts he laughs and sayes he knew it well enough that his Physick would quench that extreame fire nay sometimes when being almost dead I have lost my speech I heare him chide my friends that weep to see me in this sad condition Fools that you are sayes he do you not see that 't is his feavour that is at extremity and is leaving of him Thus this traitor rocks me and in the meene time I am so well that I am almost dead I am not ignorant how much I was to blame to call my Enemies to my help but could I imagine that those whose knowledge makes profession to cure would employ it altogether to kill me for alas you may believe that if this were not the first time that I fell into the ditch I should not now be in a condition to bemoan my self I for my part advise those weak wrastlers that they may be revenged of those that have thrown them to turn Doctors for I 'le assure them they 'l send those to the ground that had laid them there In truth I think that to dream in ones sleep that one meets a Physitian is sufficient to put one into a feavour to see their lean steeds covered with a long hearse-cloth feebly support their feeble Master would one not think 't were a Beere that the Parque is got astride upon and may we not take his riding-rod for death's standard since she brings along his Lieutenant This is the reason without doubt that Policy commanded them to mount Mules and not Mares lest the race of Doctors becoming more numerous there would have been at last more executioners then patients Oh! what pleasure could I take in anatomizing their Mules those poor Mules that never felt spur neither within nor upon their flesh because boots and spurrs are superfluities that the delicate wisdom of the Faculty cannot disgest These Gentlemen govern themselves with so much scruple that they make these poor beasts because they are their domesticks observe fasts more rigorous than those of the Ninivites and abundance of very long ones the custom of which are forgotten By these diets they leave them onely their bare skin upon their bones and we that pay them well are not better used for these frozen Doctors take more Gellâ—y out of us then they put in In fine all their discourses are so cold that I find but one difference between them and the people of the North that is those of Norway have alwaies mules upon their heels and these have alwaies their heeles upon their mules They are so great enemies to heat that they have no sooner found out in a patient any luke-warmness but as if that body were a Vessuvius they are presently a bleeding and glistering drowning this poor stomack in Sena Cassia and Barly-water and weakning life to debilitate say they this heat that takes nourishment as long as it meets with matter to work upon insomuch that if the speciall hand of God makes them bound again towards the world they presently impure it to the vertues of the refrigerative with which they have benum'd this incendiary They steal from us the heat and energy that is in the blood Thus having bled too much our souls flying from us serve as a shittlecock to their Chirurgeons Palletes Well Sir what think you then after this are we not much to blame to complain that for a weeks sicknesse they ask ten pound is it not a cheap cure where the life escapes But confront a little I beseech you the resemblance that is between the Doctor 's proceedings and the processe of a criminall The Physicians having considered the Urine questions the patient upon the stool and condemns him the Chirurgeon binds him and the Apothecary discharges his office behind Those very persons that think they stand in need of them do not much esteem them no sooner are they come into the chamber but one lolls out ones tongue at the Physitian one turns ones arse to the Apothecary and holds up ones fist at the Chirurgeon 'T is true they revenge themselves with a witnesse it alwaies costs the jeaster his life I have observed that all that is fatall in Hell is comprehended in the number three there is three Lakes three Doggs three Judges three Parques three Gerrons three Hecates three Gorgons three Furies The scourges God uses to punish mankind are likewise three the Sword Pestilence and Famine the World the Flesh and the Devill Hail Thunder and Lightning the Blooding the Physick and the Glister In fine three sorts of people are sent into the world purposely to martyrize man in this life the Lawyer torments the purse the Physician the Body and the Divine the soul But these Masters of the Mules brag on 't too for mine comming one day into my chamber I onely said Quot to him this impudent homicide presently apprehending that I ask'd him the number of his murders laying hold of his great beard answered me â—ot I am not asham'd on 't saies he and to show you that we teach how to kill as well as Fencers we all our life-time exercise our selves upon the Tierce and the Quart That which I concluded upon the brazen impudence of this person was That if the rest of the profession confessed lesse they notwithstanding did as much That this was contented onely with killing and that his companions to murder added treachery That if one would write the Physitians travells one could not count them by the Epitaphs onely of one Parish And in fine the Feavour assaults us the Physitian kills us and the Priest sings But 't were nothing for Madam Faculty to send our bodies to the grave if she did not attempt our souls too The
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
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
that you ever lived Doubtlesse you are in hopes to mollifie me by the dedication of some troublesome Burlesque No no I am inexorable 't is resolved you shall die and that presently and then according as a good humor may render me mercifull I 'le raise you again to read my Letter for what if to regain my favour you should put my name in the front of a farce I know that all things that are foolish do not cause laughter and besides that to make something very ridiculous you need onely speak seriously Your Poems have too much of the shambles in them and that I think is the reason that your Judgment of Paris doth not sell Then if you 'l take my advice save your self and fly to Pegasus his Bar you 'l make there an incorruptible Judge since your judgment cannot be bought To proceed 'T is not onely from your Bookseller that I heard you made Rhymes I did much suspect it before for 't would have been a great miracle that in so corrupt a volume as your body the worms should not have had footing Your very breath is sufficient to make us believe that by agreement with death you are to breathe nothing but infection and your musk-comfits cannot prevent your stinking in every ones opinion I am not incensed against this putrefaction 't is the fault of your leprous parents Your very flesh is nothing else then earth chapt by the Sun so dung'd that if every plant that hath been set had taken root you would now have upon your shoulders a tall copps After this I do not at all wonder that you say you are not yet known four foot of dirt indeed keeps you from being seen you are so finely buried under the dunghill that if you did not want a potshard to scrape you you would be a compleat Job In troth you give the lye bravely to those Philosophers that sleight the Creation if any of them be now to be found I wish they may meet with you for after they have seen you they 'l easily believe that Man may have been made of dirt They 'l preach you and make use of your own self to draw you from that sad Atheism you groan under You know that I do not speak by rote and that I am not him alone that hath heard you pray to God to give you so much grace as not to believe in him Why how now impious wretch God dares not shut a door against you when you fly from a beating but it is presently by you broken down and yet you begin to believe in him again onely that you may have some body to swear by when your dice do not give a favourable answer to your avarice I grant that yours is not a fortune that can bear a losse patiently for you are as beggarly as Diogenes and hardly would the whole earth be enough to satisfie you that is it hath made you affront such a world of people 'T is no more possible for you to find out a street in this City to walk in that is not a Creditrix unlesse the King causes another Paris to be built in the aire The other day at a Councill of War the Marshall de Jurenne was advised to put you into a morter-piece and let you flie into Saint Menehou to compell the inhabitants for want of provisions in three daies to surrender In troth I think that this stratagem would take since your nose that hath not the use of reason that poor nose the resting place and the paradice of fillips seems to turn up onely to get further off your famished mouth your teeth good god how I run on are more to be feared then your hands their length and rottenness fright me But some body would upbraid me and say that I torment too much a person that saies he hath so great an esteem for me O little Jackanapes O Puppit incarnate can it be possible but I see you leap at this glorious sirname Alas ask all the world what you are and you shall see if every body doth not say that you have nothing in you of a man but the resemblance of a Baboon I compare you not to this little four-footed man because I think you discourse as well as a Monkey no no Tumbler for when I consider you thus flesh-forsaken I imagin that if you stir your sinewes are drie enough to make that noise which you call words that infallibly is the reason you prate and riggle up and down without any intervall But since there is a speaking pray tell me if you speak by stirring or if you stir by speaking that which makes me doubt that all the noise that you make comes not from your tongue is that one tongue cannot speak a fourth part of what you talk and that the most part of your discourses are so far from reason that one may well think that you speak from a part that is not very neer the brain In fine my little Ape it is so true that thou art all tongue that if it were no impiety to adapt sacred things to prophane I should believe that St. John Prophesied of you when he writ that the word was made flesh And indeed if I were obliged to write as much as you speake t' ware but necessary for me to become Pen but since that cannot be you 'l permit me to bid you farewell Adieu then little companion for you would be but scurvily obeyed if I were Your servant 21. Letter SIR SO many caresses of Fortune as I have deprived my selfe of in losing your friendship perswades me at last to repent that I contributed so much to the losse of it and if I am in disgrace I confesse I deserve to be so for not being more carefull to preserve my selfe in your esteem the esteem of a Person that makes the least that visites him pass under the title of Count and Marquesse Certainely Sir you make your selfe the father of many great Persons that did not believe themselves so and I begin to perceive that I was much to blame thus to neglect my good fortune for by this account I might perhaps have got a principality There are some that condemne this Prodigall humor in you but they are ignorant that 't is your great desire of multiplying the Nobility that obliges you to these Magnificent actions and that being uncapable of producing Gentlemen according to the flesh you will at least create them according to the spirit The Romanticke Authors that you are acquainted withall do oftentimes give Empires to those that perhaps before enjoyed not two Acres of ground and your talent is so like theirs that it gives you the same Priviledges 'T is well enough known that all those great Authors do not speak better then you because you say the very same as they do and that every moment you vomit out Cassander and Polexander so undisgested and as you took them in that one would think one saw in your
are to blame to be weary of his life he hath not yet lived he hath onely slept have patience at least till he hath taken a nap Hath no body told him are you sure that death and sleep are brothers He speaks perhaps a scrupule being tender conscience'd having enjoyed me to have any thing to do with t'other Infer not hence that I would by this prove that the person of whom we speak is a foolish man not at all he is nothing lesse then a man For however he may have been baptized like us that 's a priviledge the parish-Bells enjoy as well as he I could speak of his life till I end my own to allay your griefs but sleep begins to cause so great weaknesses in my hand that my head for company falls upon my ear Ah as I live I write I know not what Farewell good-night SIR Your Servant 23. Against a Plagiary SIR SInce our friend planders our Conceptions 't is a signe he esteems us he would not take them if he did not believe them good and we are much to blame to take it ill that having no children of his own he adopts ours That which troubles me for you know that I am a revenger of wrongs and am very much enclined to distributive Justice is to see him attribute to his wicked Imagination the good services done him by his Memory and that he calls himself the father of a thousand high fancies which at most he hath been but a midwife to often This Sir let us brag that we write better then he whilst he writes just as we do and laugh to see him at this age have a writing-Master by him since by it he doth us no other mischief then to render our works more legible We ought contrariwise receive with respect those wise and morall advertisments by which he endeavours to reclaim the extravagances of our youth yea certainly we ought to give more faith to them and make no more doubt of them then of the Evangelists for all the world knowes they are not things that he hath devised In troth to have such a friend is to maintain a Presse at an easie rate For my part I imagine for all his great Manuscripts that if after his death they make an Inventorie of his Study of Books that is of those that proceeded from his own brain all his works together taking away that which is not his will make a Library of white paper He assumes the spoils of the dead and he believes to have invented that which he remembers But 't is but an ill proof of the noble extraction of his thoughts to derive their antiquity but from a man that is still alive But by this he concludes for the Metempsychosis and shews that if he should make use of what Socrates was the Author of he should not rob him he himselfe having formerly been the same Socrates that invented them And then hath he not memory enough to be rich with that onely why he hath one so vast that he remembers that which was said thirty Ages before he was in the world Obtain of him for me I that am a little more sensible then the dead a permission to date my thoughts that my posterity may not remain doubtfull There was heretofore a goddesse Eccho this without doubt must be the god for like her he never saies any thing but what others have said before him and repeats it so verbatim that transcribing the other day one of my Letters he cal'd it composing he had the most ado in the world to subscribe Your servant Beaulieu because at the end of it there was Your Servant De Bergerac 24. Another on the same subject SIR AFter having put in a heat against us this man that is nothing but flegme do we not fear that one of these daies they will accuse us of burning the River This water-wit murmurs continually like the fountains yet no body understands what he saies Ah! Sir what a strange accident this man makes me foresee at the end of the world which is that if he dies not till his memory have an end the resurrection trumpets will never be silent this onely faculty in him leaves room for no other and he is so great a persecutor of common sense that he makes me suspect that the universall judgment was promised that such as he might have some who had none in particular And to speak ingenuously who ever sends him out of this world will be much to blame to dispatch him without reason Neverthelesse he speaks as much as all Authors for they all seem to have spoken but for him He never opens his mouth but we find a theft in it and he is so accustomed to thieving that when he holds his tongue 't is that he may steal from those that are dumb For all this ours is but a false valour and we unjustly share the advantages of the combat to oppose our understandings that have three faculties to his that hath but one Therefore it is that he hath a great vacuum in his head he ought to be pardoned since it was impossible for Nature to fill it with a third part of a reasonable soul But to make amends for that he never lets it sleep he still employes it in undressing And those great Philosophers who by professing poverty thought to have freed themselves from contribution pay him every day the very poorest amongst them a tax of ten Conceptions and this wretched wit-stealer lets not one escape but imposes on them according to the extent of their income 'T is to little purpose that they hide themselves he 'l make them disburse and speak English Nay sometimes they must be content to see their whole Estate confiscated when they have not wherewithall to pay the tax He exercises these rapines in safety for Greece and Italy being under other Princes he shall not be questioned in England for the robberies he hath done them I believe he thinks because that the Heathens are our enemies that what he plunders them of is lawfull prize This Sir is the reason that in every page of his Epistles we see the Cameter of the living and of the dead after this you need not doubt but that if at the resurrection every one takes that which belongs to him the sharing of his writings wil be the last difference among men After he hath been five of six daies in our companies rifling us more laden with points of wit then a Porcupine he goes and sticks them in his Epigrams and Sonnets like Pins into a Cushamet Yet for all this he boasts that there is nothing in his Writings that doth not as justly belong to him as the Paper and Ink which he paid for that the twenty four Letters of the Alphabet are as much his as ours and consequently the disposition of them And that Aristotle being dead he may lawfully seize upon his books since his lands which are immoveables are not now without Masters
beliefe to the Possessed 't is seene enough by the contorsions that disturbe you and your corporall torments that you have the divell in you and 't is to little purpose that you think to free your selfe from the torments of hell by a strong imagination and haunting debauched places But we care not provided you lime none but old or barren ones because the coming of Antichrist startles us and you know the prophesie but you laugh master Ican you that believe in the Apocalyps as in the Mythologie say that hell is a foolish story to fright men withall as they use to fright Children by threatning to make them eate a piece of the Moon Confesse confesse that you are the Incomparable for expound a little how can you be impious and Bigot at the same time and weave with the thread of your life a mixed stuff of Superstition Athism Ah! master John my friend you 'l dye dancing to the Saints-bel indeed when we consider the joint peeces that compose the symmetry of your members we are so satisfied that we need not consult an Oracle to be assured and were your haire more cleane and upright then your Conscience your forehead cut into Lanes after the Modell of the fields of Beausse where the sun markes your flats by the shaddow of your furrowes as exactly as he shows the day-hours upon a sundiall your eyes under shelter of your bushie eye-browes that look like two precipices on the brink of a wood are so much sunke that if you live but a month longer you 'l look upon us with your Occiput to see them so red as they are one is perswaded that one sees two bloody Cometts and I find some resemblance a little above in your Eye-browes is discovered fixed starres that some call otherwise your face is shaded by a nose whose infection is the cause that you stink in all mens opinions and my shoo-maker assured me the other day that he took your cheeks for a peece of black Spanish leather nay I have suffered my tongue to say that the smallest haires of your Mustachoces charitably furnishes your Church with a holy water-brush this I think is somewhat neere in Hieroglyphick the Image that Constistutes your Horoscope I would proceed but expecting visiters I feared least I should omit telling you at the bottome of my Letter that which is not ordinarily set there that I am not nor ever will be Your Servant Mons r Ican 28. Against a Pedant SIR I Wonder that such a log as you who by your habit seems to be become but a great Charcoal should not yet blush and become red with the fire that burns you within Think at least when your bad Angel makes you rebell against me that my arme is not far from my head and that till now your own weaknesse and my generosity hath secured you although you are a very contemptible thing yet I 'le free my self of you if you become troublesom Give me not occasion then to remember that you are in the world and if you will live above a day call to minde often that I have forbid you to make me the object of your slanders my name fills a period but ill the thicknesse of your square waste would close it a great deal better You act Caesar when from your Pedagogist-Tribunall you see your little Monarchy tremble under your wooden Scepter But take heed that a Tyrant raises not up a Brutus for although you are the space of four hours upon the head of Emperours your Domination is not so strongly established but that the sound of a Bell destroyes it twice a day 'T is said you boast that you expose in all places your conscience and your salvation I believe this of your piety But to hazard your life for it I know you want courage and that you would not stake it against the Monarchy of the world You consult and plot my ruine but they are bitts that you cut out for others You would gladly from the shore in safety behold a ship wrack at Sea and I the whilst am condemned to the Pistoll by a Puritanicall pedant a Pedant in sacris who ought for an example if the image of a Pistoll had taken place in his thoughts to be exorcised Barbarous Schoolmaster what cause have I given you to wish me this ill You run over all the crimes perhaps which you are guilty of and then you think of accusing me of that impiety which your own memory taxes you withall But know that I know a thing which you know not and that thing is god and that one of the strongest arguments after those of faith that hath convinced me of his true existence is the consideration that were it not for a summary and soveraign goodnesse that reignes in the Universe thus wicked and weak as you are you could not have lived so long unpunished Besides I have learnt that some little works though much above yours hath caused in your timerous courage this passion that you thunder against me But in truth Sir I am ready to quarrell with my own imagination that she hath made my Satyr bite harder then yours although yours be the fruit that the best wits of the antients have sweat for You ought to be offended at Nature and not me that cannot help it for could I imagine that to have wit was to injure you You know besides that I was not in the belly of that Mare that conceived you to dispose to humanity those organs and the complexion that concurred to the making you a Horse I pretend not however that these truths that I preach to you should reflect upon the body of the University that glorious mother of Sciences of which if you are any member it is the shamefull one There is nothing in you that is not very deformed your very soul is black it being in mourning for the death of your conscience and your habit as its giblets keeps the same colour I confesse 't is true that a miserable Hypocondriack as you are cannot obscure the merit of the learned men of your profession and however a ridiculous vain-glory perswades you that you are the ablest Regent of the University I protest to you my good friend that if you are the greatest man in the Muses Academy you are beholden for it onely to the greatnesse of your members and that you are the greatest personage of your Colledge by the same right that St. Christopher is the greatest Saint in our Ladies Church 't is not but that if fortune and justice were agreed you would very well deserve to be the chief of four hundred Asses that are taught at your Colledge yea certainly you deserve it and I know that the Master of the high function whom whipping better becomes then you nor none to whom it more justly belongs and of that great number I know those that would give ten pound to flea you and if you 'l believe me take them at their
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
be accused of having in humanely killed without a cause of all your servants the most passionate the most humble and the most obedient servant De. Bergerac 3. Letter Madam YOu have a kindnesse for me Ah? in the very first I ne I am your most passionate obedient servant for I feel already my soul by excesse of joy spread so farre from me that shee 'l have gone past my lips before I can have time so to end my Letter neverthelesse 't is now concluded and I can if I please seale it for since you have given me assurances of your affection so many lines is needlesse against a place that 's already taken and were it not that 't is the Custome for a Hero to dye standing and a Lover complaining I had taken leave both of you and the Sun without acquainting you with it but I am obliged to employ the last sighs of my life to publish in bidding you farewell that I dye for love you know of whom you believe it may be that the dying of Lovers is onely a manner of speaking that they have got and because of the conformity of the wordes Passion and suffering desire and death that they often taken one for t'other But I am very confident that you 'l not doubt of the Possibility of mine when you have considered the violence and the continuance of my disease and the lesse when after having read this discourse you find at the Extreamity Madam Your servant 4. Letter Madam I Was so farre from loosing my heart when I did you homage with my liberty that since that time I find it a great deale bigger I believe he is multiplyed and that being not enough of one for all your wounds he hath used his endeavours to bring forth others in all my arteries where I feel him beate that he may be present in divers places and that he only may become the only object of all your Darts in the mean time Madam freedom that pretious treasure for which Rome heretofore ventured the empire of the world That deare liberty you have taken from me and nothing that passes from my vitall spirits to my senses hath made this conquest your wit onely deserv'd this glory his vivacity his sweetnesse his extent and his strength merited enough to make me deliver it up to so noble fetters that faire and great Soul raised into a heaven so farre above that which is the reasonable one and so neere to the Intelligible that she eminently possesses all the faire one Nay I 'de say too much of the Almighty Creator that made her if of all the attributes that are essentiall to its perfection there was not wanting that of Mercifull yeas if we can imagine any defect in a divinity I accuse you of that Do you not remember my last visit when complaining of your cruelty you promised me at my departure that I should find you more favourable if you found me more discreet and that taking your leave of me you bid me come againe the next day because you were resolved to make the tryall But Alas take a dayes time to apply remedies to wounds that are in the heart is it not to suspend your assistance till the languishing party is dead And that which makes me wonder the more is that you mistrusting that this Miracle might come to passe you fly from home to shun my fatall re-encontre Well Madam well fly me hide your selfe from my very remembrance one ought indeed to fly and hide ones selfe when one hath committed a Murder good gods what do I say Ah Madam pardon the fury of one that is desperate No noâ— Appear that 's a law for Mankind which doth not concerne you for t' was never heard that Soveraignes ever gave an account of the death of their slaves yeas I ought to esteeme my fortune very great that I deserved you should take the paines to ruine me for since you have been pleased to hate me that will at least witnesse to posterity that I was not indifferent to you Besides the death that you thought you had punish'd me withall makes me rejoyce and if you are troubled to apprehend what this joy might be 't is the secret satisfaction that I have to have dyed for you in making you ungratefull Yeas Madam I am dead and I find you 'l have much ado to conceive if my death be reall how it can be that I should send you the newes of it nevertheless there 's nothing more true but learn that man must endure two deaths in this world one violent which is love and the other naturall that reunites us to the insensible substance And this death that is called Love is the more cruell because when we beginne to love we begin to dye 't is the reciprocall passage of two souls that seeks one another to animate in common that which they love and of which the one halfe cannot be parted from the other halfe without dying as 't is hapned to Madam Your faithfull servant 5. Letter Madam AM I condemned to weep much longer I beseech you my deare Mistresse in the name of your good Angel be so much to a friend me as to let me know your intentions that I may betimes provide me a place amongst the Quinze vingts for I perceive that I am by your courtesie predestinated to die blind yeas blind for your ambition would not be satisfied to have me onely a Monoculus Have you not made two Alimbecks of my two eyes through which you have found out the art to distill my life and to convert it into clear water In truth I should suspect if my death were any advantage to you and if it were not the onely thing that I cannot obtain that you exhausted those springs of water that are within me onely that you might the more easily burn me and I begin to believe some such thing since I perceived that the more humidity my eyes draw from my heart the more he burns I cannot think that my father did make my body of the same clay that the first mans was composed of but without doubt he form'd it of a lime-stone since the humidity of those tears I shed hath almost consumed me But can you believe it Madam in what manner it hath consumed me I dare no longer walk in the streets thus all on fire for fear the boyes should come about me with squibs for they 'l certainly take me for a past-bord figure that was got loose from some artificiall fireworks neither dare I show my self in the Country lest I should be thought to be one of the walking Hermes's that lead people to drowning In fine you may easily understand what all this means 't is Madam that if you do not come back and that quickly if you enquire after me at your return you 'l find that I am shut up in the Thuiberies and that my name is the Fire-beast which is showed to the people for mony you 'l then be