' The offspring of
this connection he styled 'his nephews after the fashion of the Marais.'
Francoise did her best to reclaim this sister and to conceal her shame,
but the laughing abbe made no secret of it.
But the laugher was approaching his end. His attacks became more and
more violent: still he laughed at them. Once he was seized with a
terrible choking hiccup, which threatened to suffocate him. The first
moment he could speak he cried, 'If I get well, I'll write a satire on
the hiccup.' The priests came about him, and his wife did what she could
to bring him to a sense of his future danger. He laughed at the priests
and at his wife's fears. She spoke of hell. 'If there is such a place,'
he answered, 'it won't be for me, for without you I must have had my
hell in this life.' The priests told him, by way of consolation, that
'God had visited him more than any man.'--He does me too much honour,'
answered the mocker. 'You should give him thanks,' urged the
ecclesiastic. 'I can't see for what,' was the shameless answer.
On his death-bed he parodied a will, leaving to Corneille 'two hundred
pounds of patience; to Boileau (with whom he had a long feud), the
gangrene; and to the Academy, the power to alter the French language as
they liked.
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