Page:Poet Lore, volume 34, 1923.djvu/79

 Cardinal surprised at her wit, begged her pardon, and later told Bois-Robert that he must do something for Mademoiselle de Gournay.

"I give her a two hundred écus pension," said he.

"But she has a servant," replied Bois-Robert.

"What servant?"

"Mademoiselle Jamin, bastarde daughter of Amadis, page of Ronsard."

"I give her five hundred livres a year," exclaimed the Cardinal.

"But there is Madame Piaillon, her female cat!"

"To her, a twenty livres pension."

"But she has had kittens," pursued Bois-Robert.

"Then add one pistol for the kittens," laughed the Cardinal.

She needed pensions, did Marie de Gournay, for she was not rich. Every one knew it. How could she, without a pension, afford an apartment in the Rue St-Honoré, keep a servant, and an open house (her table, however, had an execrable reputation.) Marie really invested her little upon the rich and great, so that in return they might help her. She was accused of extravagance, especially in having a carriage. Her reply throws an interesting side-light upon the Paris of those days: "As for the carriage which has been reproached me, it is essential to a woman of my station in life—and more than that very necessary because of the filth of the streets of Paris."

Les Chevaliers Yvrande et Bueil, together with the Comte de Moret played another trick on her—this time a much more serious one. They sent her a letter supposed to have been written by James I of England, in which the king asked her for the story of her life and her portrait. Much flattered, Marie de Gournay sat for her picture, and in six weeks wrote her autobiography, both of which she sent to England, where James I was much mystified at the unusual gift. One can imagine Mademoiselle de Gournay's wrath when she found out how she had been deceived. Furious, she went to the three rascals—demanded her manuscript, her picture. These they could not return, but the vieile fille made them sign an affidavit to their perfidious act. "They submitted to this with the greatest aversion possible," she says maliciously.

It is to this autobiography that we owe much of our knowledge concerning the long life of Marie de Gournay. At the time