The Queen Pedauque | Page 8

he drank deeply.
"This wine," he said, "infilters into the economy of the human body a
sweet and salutary warmth. It is a liquor worthy to be sung at Teos and
at the Temple by the princes of bacchic poets, Anacreon and Chaulieu.
I will anoint with it the lips of my young disciple."
He held the goblet under my chin and exclaimed:
"Bees of the Academy, come, come and place yourselves in
harmonious swarms on the mouth of Jacobus Tournebroche, henceforth
consecrated to the Muses."
"Oh! Sir Priest," said my mother, "it is a truth that wine attracts the
bees, particularly sweet wine. But it is not to be wished that those
nefarious flies should place themselves on the mouth of my Jacquot, as
their sting is cruel. One day in biting into a peach a bee stung me on the
tongue, and I had to suffer fiendish pains. They would be calmed only
by a little earth, mixed up with spittle, which Friar Ange put into my
mouth in reciting the prayer of St Comis."
The priest gave her to understand that he spoke of bees in an allegorical
sense only. And my father said reproachfully: "Barbe, you're a holy and
worthy woman, but many a time I have noticed that you have a peevish
liking to throw yourself thoughtlessly into serious conversation like a
dog into a game of skittles."
"Maybe," replied my mother. "But had you followed my counsels
better, Léonard, you would have done better. I may not know all the
sorts of bees, but I know how to manage a home and understand the
good manners a man of a certain age ought to practise, who is the father
of a family and standard-bearer of his guild."
My father scratched his ear, and poured some wine for the priest, who
said with a sigh:
"Certainly, in our days, knowledge is not as much honoured in our
kingdom of France, as it had been by the Romans, although

degenerated at the time when rhetoric brought Eugenius to the
Emperor's throne. It is not a rarity in our century to find a clever man in
a garret without fire or candle. _Exemplum ut talpa_--I am an
example."
Thereafter he gave us a narration of his life, which I'll report just as it
came out of his own mouth--that is, as near it as the weakness of my
age allowed me to hear distinctly and hereafter keep in my memory. I
believe I have been able to restore it after the confidences he gave me
at a later time, when he honoured me with his friendship.

CHAPTER III
The Story of the Abbé's Life
"As you see me," he said, "or rather as you do not see me, young,
slender, with ardent eyes and black hair, I was a teacher of liberal arts
at the College of Beauvais under Messrs Dugué, Guérin, Coffin and
Baffier. I had been ordained, and expected to make a big name in letters.
But a woman upset my hopes. Her name was Nicole Pigoreau and she
kept a bookseller's shop at the Golden Bible on the square near the
college. I went there frequently to thumb the books she received from
Holland and also those bipontic editions illustrated with notes,
comments and commentaries of great erudition. I was amiable and
Mistress Pigoreau became aware of it, which was my misfortune.
"She had been pretty, and still knew how to be pleasing. Her eyes
spoke. One day the Cicero, Livy, Plato and the Aristotle, Thucydides,
Polybius and Varro, the Epictetus, Seneca, Boethius and Cassiodorus,
the Homer, Æschylus. Sophocles, Euripides, Plautus and Terence, the
Diodorus of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, St John
Chrysostom and St Basil, St Jerome and St Augustine, Erasmus,
Saumaise, Turnebe and Scaliger, St Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure,
Bossuet dragging Ferri with him, Lenain, Godefroy, Mézeray,
Maimbourg, Fabricius, Father Lelong and Father Pitou, all the poets, all
the historians, all the fathers, all the doctors, all the theologians, all the

humanists, all the compilers, assembled high and low on the walls,
became witnesses to our kisses.
"'I could not resist you,' she said to me; 'don't conceive a bad opinion of
me.'
"She expressed her love for me in singular raptures. Once she made me
try on neck and wrist bands of fine lace, and finding them suit me well
she insisted on my accepting them. I did not want to. But on her
becoming irritated by my refusal, which she considered an offence
against love, I finally consented to accept them, afraid to offend her.
"My good fortune lasted till I was to be replaced by an officer. I
became spiteful over it, and in the ardour of avenging myself I
informed the College Regents that I did not go