The Abbey of Poissy has been rendered famous by old authors as a place of pleasure, where the misconduct of the nuns first began, and whence proceeded so many good stories calculated to make laymen laugh at the expense of our holy religion.  The said abbey by this means became fertile in proverbs, which none of the clever folks of our day understand, although they sift and chew them in order to digest them.

If you ask one of them what the olives of Poissy are, they will answer you gravely that it is a periphrase relating to truffles, and that the way to serve them, of which one formerly spoke, when joking with these virtuous maidens, meant a peculiar kind of sauce.  That’s the way the scribblers hit on truth once in a hundred times.  To return to these good recluses, it was said—­by way of a joke, of course—­that they preferred finding a harlot in their chemises to a good woman.  Certain other jokers reproached them with imitating the lives of the saints, in their own fashion, and said that all they admired in Mary of Egypt was her fashion of paying the boatmen.  From whence the raillery:  To honour the saints after the fashion of Poissy.  There is still the crucifix of Poissy, which kept the stomachs warm; and the matins of Poissy, which concluded with a little chorister.  Finally, of a hearty jade well acquainted with the ways of love, it was said—­She is a nun of Poissy.  That property of a man which he can only lend, was The key of the Abbey of Poissy.  What the gate of the said abbey was can easily be guessed.  This gate, door, wicket, opening, or road was always half open, was easier to open than to shut, and cost much in repairs.  In short, at that period, there was no fresh device in love invented, that had not its origin in the good convent of Poissy.  You may be sure there is a good deal of untruth and hyperbolical emphasis, in these proverbs, jests, jokes, and idle tales.  The nuns of the said Poissy were good young ladies, who now this way, now that, cheated God to the profit of the devil, as many others did, which was but natural, because our nature is weak; and although they were nuns, they had their little imperfections.  They found themselves barren in a certain particular, hence the evil.  But the truth of the matter is, all these wickednesses were the deeds of an abbess who had fourteen children, all born alive, since they had been perfected at leisure.  The fantastic amours and the wild conduct of this woman, who was of royal blood, caused the convent of Poissy to become fashionable; and thereafter no pleasant adventure happened in the abbeys of France which was not credited to these poor girls, who would have been well satisfied with a tenth of them.  Then the abbey was reformed, and these holy sisters were deprived of the little happiness and liberty which they had enjoyed.  In an old cartulary of the abbey of Turpenay, near Chinon, which in those later troublous times had found a resting place in the library of Azay, where the