“Ah! how very pretty!” interposed Desbarreaux.  “See the villages marked out; here is Petits-Soins, Billet-Galant, then Billet-Doux!”

“Oh! ’tis ingenious in the highest degree!” cried Vaugelas, Colletet, and the rest.

“And observe,” continued the author, inflated with this success, “that it is necessary to pass through Complaisance and Sensibility; and that if we do not take this road, we run the risk of losing our way to Tiedeur, Oubli, and of falling into the Lake of Indifference.”

“Delicious! delicious! ‘gallant au supreme!’” cried the auditors; “never was greater genius!”

“Well, Madame,” resumed Scudery, “I now declare it in your house:  this work, printed under my name, is by my sister—­she who translated ‘Sappho’ so agreeably.”  And without being asked, he recited in a declamatory tone verses ending thus: 

          L’Amour est un mal agreable
          Don’t mon coeur ne saurait guerir;
          Mais quand il serait guerissable,
          Il est bien plus doux d’en mourir.

“How! had that Greek so much wit?  I can not believe it,” exclaimed Marion de Lorme; “how superior Mademoiselle de Scudery is to her!  That idea is wholly hers; she must unquestionably put these charming verses into ‘Clelie’.  They will figure well in that Roman history.”

“Admirable, perfect!” cried all the savans; “Horatius, Aruns, and the amiable Porsenna are such gallant lovers.”

They were all bending over the “carte de Tendre,” and their fingers crossed in following the windings of the amorous rivers.  The young Poquelin ventured to raise a timid voice and his melancholy but acute glance, and said: 

“What purpose does this serve?  Is it to give happiness or pleasure?  Monsieur seems to me not singularly happy, and I do not feel very gay.”

The only reply he got was a general look of contempt; he consoled himself by meditating, ‘Les Precieuses Ridicules’.

Desbarreaux prepared to read a pious sonnet, which he was penitent for having composed in an illness; he seemed to be ashamed of having thought for a moment upon God at the sight of his lightning, and blushed at the weakness.  The mistress of the house stopped him.

“It is not yet time to read your beautiful verses; you would be interrupted.  We expect Monsieur le Grand Ecuyer and other gentlemen; it would be actual murder to allow a great mind to speak during this noise and confusion.  But here is a young Englishman who has just come from Italy, and is on his return to London.  They tell me he has composed a poem—­I don’t know what; but he’ll repeat some verses of it.  Many of you gentlemen of the Academy know English; and for the rest he has had the passages he is going to read translated by an ex-secretary of the Duke of Buckingham, and here are copies in French on this table.”