There is a time for mirth and a time for
mourning, the Preacher tells us. Scarron never learned this truth, and
he laughed too much and too long. Yet let us not end the laugher's life
in sorrow:
'It is well to be merry and wise,' &c.
Let us be merry as the poor cripple, who bore his sufferings so well,
and let us be wise too. There is a lesson for gay and grave in the life
of Scarron, the laugher.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 27: _Coadjuteur._--A high office in the Church of Rome.]
FRANCOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT AND THE DUC DE SAINT-SIMON.
Rank and Good Breeding.--The Hotel de Rochefoucault.--Racine and
his Plays.--La Rochefoucault's Wit and Sensibility.--Saint
Simon's Youth.--Looking out for a Wife.--Saint-Simon's Court
Life.--The History of Louise de la Valliere.--A mean Act of
Louis Quatorze.--All has passed away.--Saint-Simon's Memoirs of
His Own Time.
The precursor of Saint-Simon, the model of Lord Chesterfield, this
ornament of his age, belonged, as well as Saint-Simon, to that state of
society in France which was characterised--as Lord John Russell, in his
'Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans,' tells us--by an idolatry of power
and station.
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