Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/95

Rh afterwards cardinal), he could exclaim before an assemblage of valets: "I have fifty years of liberty on my head." "You have written pretty verses," said Esprit, his colleague at the Academy, to him, at the table of Chapelain. "Deuce take your pretty," he cried angrily, and could scarcely be persuaded to stay. On another occasion he shouted: "Shut the doors! let no one enter; no valets here! I have trouble enough to recite before their masters." He called himself the fat Virgil, and the Norman Democritus. I must not omit to mention one of the best jokes of his life: it is said that in his latter days he had hopes of an abbey, or even a bishopric. Surely he would have been a noble priest, after the order of Saint Rabelais; for of him, as of Chaucer's Monk, it could have safely been said:—

Now certeinly he was a fair prelat; He was not pale as a for-pyned goost."

And as of Chaucer's Frere:—

Ful sweetly herde he confessioun, And plesaunt was his absolucioun. He was an esy man to geve penance. He knew wel the tavernes in every toun, And every ostiller or gay tapstere."