[Footnote 25:  Lord Mahon, now Earl of Stanhope, if not the most eloquent, one of the most honest historians of our time.]

[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.’—­There is a simpler Anglo-Saxon term for this condition, but I spare you.  The eastern Prometheus went on seriously with his work, and still produced the same perfect models, faultless alike in brain and leg.  But when it came to the delicate finish, when the last touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more delicate members went awry.  It was thus that instead of the power of seeing every colour properly, one man came out with a pair of optics which turned everything to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted itself to the intelligence.  Another, to continue the allegory, whose tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fingers of the man-maker, heard everything in a wrong sense, and his life was miserable, because, if you sang his praises, he believed you were ridiculing him, and if you heaped abuse upon him, he thought you were telling lies of him.

But as Prometheus Orientalis grew more jovial, it seems to have come into his head to make mistakes on purpose.  ’I’ll have a friend to laugh with,’ quoth he; and when warned by an attendant Yaksha, or demon, that men who laughed one hour often wept the next, he swore a lusty oath, struck his thumb heavily on a certain bump in the skull he was completing, and holding up his little doll, cried, ’Here is one who will laugh at everything!’