]
[Footnote 26: Two years' wages were left to the servants.]
THE ABBE SCARRON.
An Eastern Allegory.--Who comes Here?--A Mad Freak and its
Consequences.--Making an Abbe of him.--The May-Fair of
Paris.--Scarron's Lament to Pellisson.--The Office of the
Queen's Patient.--'Give me a Simple Benefice.'--Scarron's
Description of Himself.--Improvidence and Servility.--The
Society at Scarron's.--The Witty Conversation.--Francoise
D'Aubigne's Debut.--The Sad Story of La Belle
Indienne.--Matrimonial Considerations.--'Scarron's Wife will
live for ever.'--Petits Soupers.--Scarron's last Moments.--A
Lesson for Gay and Grave.
There is an Indian or Chinese legend, I forget which, from which Mrs.
Shelley may have taken her hideous idea of Frankenstein. We are told in
this allegory that, after fashioning some thousands of men after the
most approved model, endowing them with all that is noble, generous,
admirable, and loveable in man or woman, the eastern Prometheus grew
weary in his work, stretched his hand for the beer-can, and draining it
too deeply, lapsed presently into a state of what Germans call
'other-man-ness.
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