' His legacy in verse to his wife is grossly disgusting, and
quite unfit for quotation. Yet he loved her well, avowed that his chief
grief in dying was the necessity of leaving her, and begged her to
remember him sometimes, and to lead a virtuous life.
His last moments were as jovial as any. When he saw his friends weeping
around him he shook his head and cried, 'I shall never make you weep as
much as I have made you laugh.' A little later a softer thought of hope
came across him. 'No more sleeplessness, no more gout,' he murmured;
'the Queen's patient will be well at last' At length the laugher was
sobered. In the presence of death, at the gates of a new world, he
muttered, half afraid, 'I never thought it was so easy to laugh at
death,' and so expired. This was in October, 1660, when the cripple had
reached the age of fifty.
Thus died a laugher. It is unnecessary here to trace the story of his
widow's strange rise to be the wife of a king. Scarron was no honour to
her, and in later years she tried to forget his existence. Boileau fell
into disgrace for merely mentioning his name before the king. Yet
Scarron was in many respects a better man than Louis; and, laugher as he
was, he had a good heart.
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