Paul Scarron

At that time there lived in Paris, about the year 1650, a man whose house was the center of gay and literary people, those who did not like the stiffness of the court or the pedantries of the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

His name was Scarron, a popular and ribald poet, a comic dramatist, a buffoon, a sort of Rabelais, whose inexhaustible wit was the admiration of the city.

He belonged to a good family, and originally was a man of means.

His uncle had been a bishop, and his father a member of the Parliament of Paris.

In spite of his poverty he contrived to give suppers—they would now be called dinners—which were exceedingly attractive.

To his house came the noted characters of the day, Mademoiselle de Scudéré the novelist, Marigny the songwriter, Ernoult the translator of Lucretius, de Grammont the pet of the court, Chatillon the duchesses de la Salliere and Sevigne, even Ninon de Enclos, all bright and fashionable people whose wit and raillery were the admiration of the city.

It so happened that to a reception of the Abbé Scarron was brought one day the young lady destined to play so important a part in the history of her country.

But her dress was too short, which so mortified her in the splendid circle to which she was introduced that she burst into tears, and Scarron was obliged to exert all his tact to comfort her.

Marie-Thérèse, happy and consoled, rejoiced in the kindness of the king and the birth of her grandson, the Duke of Burgundy.

Far from being jealous of the increasing influence of Madame de Manteno, she congratulated herself on it as one cause of the pious sentiments of Louis XIV, and never could it have occurred to her mind that Scarron's widow, the former governess of the bastards, would soon be the king's wife and the queen of France in all but name.

End of section 3.

Section 4 of Women of Versailles, The Court of Louis XIV by Arthur Léon, Ambert de Saint-Amant, translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin.

She is too frequently recalled to mind under the aspect of a worn old woman stiff and severe with tearless eyes and a face without a smile.

We forget that in her youth she was one of the prettiest women of her time, that her beauty was wonderfully preserved and that in her old age she retained that superiority of style and language, that distinction of manner and exquisite tact, that gentle firmness of character, that charm and elevation of mind which at every period of her life gained her so much praise and so many friends.

A rapid glance at a career so full of incident and so curious to study will suffice to make us understand how much sympathetic charm must have pertained to the woman who could please Scarron and Louis XIV, Ninon de L'Enclos and Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Montespan and the Queen, great ladies and nuns, prelates and little children.

Françoise d'Aubigné, the future Madame de Maintenon, came into the world November 27th, 1635, in a prison at Niort, where her father was confined, covered with debts and under an accusation of conniving with the enemy.

Louis XIV was a supreme artist who played his part of king with facility and conviction.

He was also a poet in action, whose existence, formed to strike the imagination of his subjects, unrolled itself in an uninterrupted series of grand and marvelous deeds, a sovereign enamored of glory and the ideal, who took a delighted admiration in great battles, in acts of heroism and courage, in warlike preparations, in the skillfully combined operation of a siege, in the terrible affrays of battle, and in the depths of forests in the noisy tumult of great hunting exploits.

On his deathbed, Louis XIV accused himself of having been too fond of war.

He might also have accused himself of having been too fond of women.

That of a mistress is far more dangerous.

As the prince ought always to be a perfect model of virtue, it would be well for him to avoid the frailties common to the rest of mankind, the more so because he is sure that they cannot remain hidden.

Louis XIV did not always succeed in putting these beautiful and prudent maxims into practice, but culpable as they were, his amours at all times preserved a certain poetic quality.

In the midst of his splendors, the great king thought the joy of loving and of being loved was the supreme happiness.

Ovid damned Aeneas for all time and prevented some readers from understanding the tragedy of the fourth Aeneid, which needs and displays the suffering of the hero no less than of the heroine.

Ovid's Aeneas is the father of a long line of villains, ridiculed by Jean de Meun, by Chaucer, by Shakespeare, by Scarron, and by Prior in his infamous couplet, Nor sing I Aeneas, who led by his mother, got rid of one wife and went far for another.

But Chaucer and Shakespeare and Ovid too are writing for a purpose in which a tragic Aeneas would be eminently out of place.

If we remove the heroic days from the realm of tragedy to that of psychology and allow Ovid's wit a wider range than first appeared appropriate, we shall better understand his heroical letters and their writers.

The comedy of the gods at the beginning of the play is in the manner not of Plautus, but of Ovid.

Ovid, the master of burlesque, was himself subjected to that irreverence.

Following in the wake of Scarron's New Aeneid, Daussoulie turned the myths of the Metamorphoses into travesty.

Ovid would not have been shocked, though we might wonder at the necessity of such performances.

To no one did she show more favor than to another.

King of France or Scarron, the humpback poet, so long as they could amuse her.

Ninon gave no thought to their titles or wealth or name.

To her, one was as good as another.

In the course of his brief penitence, Louis frowned majestically upon his tempest-tempered favorite, Madame de Montespan.

And she, tactless or over-sure of her position, scowled back, harshly derided the new order of affairs, and waxed more evil-tempered than ever.

In Madame de Montespan's household was a certain Madame de Maintenon, widow of the humpbacked little Scarron, who had once sued for Ninon de Lenclos's favor.

Strangely enough, his widow and Ninon were close friends, and at this court crisis, Ninon made the term friendship mean something.

A 2-2 ball game here at Fenway Park.

Don Chua, the big right-hander, ready to pitch to Scarron.

A curveball bounce.

Malzone up with a beautiful play.

Frank Malzone.

Flashing his form of last year.

Takes a base hit away from Scarron.

The moose at single at center.

At this time, Alfieri was in the very prime of his splendid manhood, one of the handsomest and most fascinating men in all Europe.

Some four years older than herself, he was a tall, stalwart, soldierly man, blue-eyed and auburn-haired, an aristocrat to his fingertips, a daring horseman, a poet, and a man of rare culture, just the man to set any woman's heart aflutter, as he had already done in most of the capitals of the continent.

He was a spoilt child of fortune, this Italian poet and soldier, a man who had drunk deep the cup of life, and to whom all conquest came with such fatal ease that already he had drained life dry of its pleasures.

Such was the man who one autumn day in the year 1777 came into the unhappy life of the Countess of Albany, still full of the passions and yearnings of youth.

It was surely fate that thus brought together those two young people of kindred tastes and kindred dissolutions, and we cannot wonder that of that first meeting Alfieri should write, At last I had met the one woman whom I had sought so long, the woman who could inspire my ambition and my work.

Emancipation had come at last, and while Louise was now free to devote her life to her beloved Alfieri, her brutal husband was left for eight years to the company of his bottle and the ministrations of his natural daughter, until a drunkard's grave at Frascati closed over his misspent life.

The pity and the tragedy of it.

Louise of Albany and her poet lover were now free to link their lives at the altar, but no such thought seems to have entered the head of either.

Now comes Boyer.

Scarron bats seventh in the lineup.

Here comes Boyer, who bats eighth in the lineup.

A right-handed batter.

In the first game that O'Toole pitched, the opening game of the series, he had one single off O'Toole, one of the six hits the Yankees made off O'Toole.

Boyer, during the season, batted 225, 11 homers, 55 runs batted in.

Now Scarron is on first.

There's no one out.