descend to such frivolities.’  The people, lately laughing, are now furious at the shameless abbe and not his liveliest wit can save him; they threaten and cry shame on him, and in terror of his life, he beats his way through the crowd, and takes to his heels.  The mob follows, hooting and savage.  The little man is nimble; those well-shaped legs—­qui ont si bien danse—­stand him in good stead.  Down the streets, and out of the town go hare and hounds.  The pursuers gain on him—­a bridge, a stream filled with tall reeds, and delightfully miry, are all the hope of refuge he sees before him.  He leaps gallantly from the bridge in among the oziers, and has the joy of listening to the disappointed curses of the mob, when reaching the stream, their quarry is nowhere to be seen.  The reeds conceal him, and there he lingers till nightfall, when he can issue from his lurking-place, and escape from the town.

Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbe Scarron of the use of his limbs for life.  His health was already ruined when he indulged this caprice; the damp of the river brought on a violent attack, which closed with palsy, and the gay young abbe had to pay dearly for the pleasure of astonishing the citizens of Mans.  The disguise was easily accounted for—­he had smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, and rolled himself in it.

This little incident gives a good idea of what Scarron was in his younger days—­ready at any time for any wild caprice.

Paul Scarron was the son of a Conseiller du Parlement of good family, resident in Paris.  He was born in 1610, and his early days would have been wretched enough, if his elastic spirits had allowed him to give way to misery.  His father was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at another’s chicks, would not, as a stepmother, leave the little Paul in peace.  She was continually putting her own children forward, and ill-treating the late ‘anointed’ son.  The father gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy home.  There may be some excuse in this for the licentious living to which he now gave himself up.  He was heir to a decent fortune, and of course thought himself justified in spending it before-hand.  Then, in spite of his quaint little figure, he had something attractive about him, for his merry face was good-looking, if not positively handsome.  If we add to this, spirits as buoyant as an Irishman’s—­a mind that not only saw the ridiculous wherever it existed, but could turn the most solemn and awful themes to laughter, a vast deal of good-nature, and not a little assurance—­we can understand that the young Scarron was a favourite with both men and women, and among the reckless pleasure-seekers of the day soon became one of the wildest.  In short, he was a fast young Parisian, with as little care for morality or religion as any youth who saunters on the Boulevards of the French capital to this day.