be accused of having in humanely killed without a cause of all your servants the most passionate the most humble and the most obedient servant De. Bergerac 3. Letter Madam YOu have a kindnesse for me Ah? in the very first I ne I am your most passionate obedient servant for I feel already my soul by excesse of joy spread so farre from me that shee 'l have gone past my lips before I can have time so to end my Letter neverthelesse 't is now concluded and I can if I please seale it for since you have given me assurances of your affection so many lines is needlesse against a place that 's already taken and were it not that 't is the Custome for a Hero to dye standing and a Lover complaining I had taken leave both of you and the Sun without acquainting you with it but I am obliged to employ the last sighs of my life to publish in bidding you farewell that I dye for love you know of whom you believe it may be that the dying of Lovers is onely a manner of speaking that they have got and because of the conformity of the wordes Passion and suffering desire and death that they often taken one for t'other But I am very confident that you 'l not doubt of the Possibility of mine when you have considered the violence and the continuance of my disease and the lesse when after having read this discourse you find at the Extreamity Madam Your servant 4. Letter Madam I Was so farre from loosing my heart when I did you homage with my liberty that since that time I find it a great deale bigger I believe he is multiplyed and that being not enough of one for all your wounds he hath used his endeavours to bring forth others in all my arteries where I feel him beate that he may be present in divers places and that he only may become the only object of all your Darts in the mean time Madam freedom that pretious treasure for which Rome heretofore ventured the empire of the world That deare liberty you have taken from me and nothing that passes from my vitall spirits to my senses hath made this conquest your wit onely deserv'd this glory his vivacity his sweetnesse his extent and his strength merited enough to make me deliver it up to so noble fetters that faire and great Soul raised into a heaven so farre above that which is the reasonable one and so neere to the Intelligible that she eminently possesses all the faire one Nay I 'de say too much of the Almighty Creator that made her if of all the attributes that are essentiall to its perfection there was not wanting that of Mercifull yeas if we can imagine any defect in a divinity I accuse you of that Do you not remember my last visit when complaining of your cruelty you promised me at my departure that I should find you more favourable if you found me more discreet and that taking your leave of me you bid me come againe the next day because you were resolved to make the tryall But Alas take a dayes time to apply remedies to wounds that are in the heart is it not to suspend your assistance till the languishing party is dead And that which makes me wonder the more is that you mistrusting that this Miracle might come to passe you fly from home to shun my fatall re-encontre Well Madam well fly me hide your selfe from my very remembrance one ought indeed to fly and hide ones selfe when one hath committed a Murder good gods what do I say Ah Madam pardon the fury of one that is desperate No noâ— Appear that 's a law for Mankind which doth not concerne you for t' was never heard that Soveraignes ever gave an account of the death of their slaves yeas I ought to esteeme my fortune very great that I deserved you should take the paines to ruine me for since you have been pleased to hate me that will at least witnesse to posterity that I was not indifferent to you Besides the death that you thought you had punish'd me withall makes me rejoyce and if you are troubled to apprehend what this joy might be 't is the secret satisfaction that I have to have dyed for you in making you ungratefull Yeas Madam I am dead and I find you 'l have much ado to conceive if my death be reall how it can be that I should send you the newes of it nevertheless there 's nothing more true but learn that man must endure two deaths in this world one violent which is love and the other naturall that reunites us to the insensible substance And this death that is called Love is the more cruell because when we beginne to love we begin to dye 't is the reciprocall passage of two souls that seeks one another to animate in common that which they love and of which the one halfe cannot be parted from the other halfe without dying as 't is hapned to Madam Your faithfull servant 5. Letter Madam AM I condemned to weep much longer I beseech you my deare Mistresse in the name of your good Angel be so much to a friend me as to let me know your intentions that I may betimes provide me a place amongst the Quinze vingts for I perceive that I am by your courtesie predestinated to die blind yeas blind for your ambition would not be satisfied to have me onely a Monoculus Have you not made two Alimbecks of my two eyes through which you have found out the art to distill my life and to convert it into clear water In truth I should suspect if my death were any advantage to you and if it were not the onely thing that I cannot obtain that you exhausted those springs of water that are within me onely that you might the more easily burn me and I begin to believe some such thing since I perceived that the more humidity my eyes draw from my heart the more he burns I cannot think that my father did make my body of the same clay that the first mans was composed of but without doubt he form'd it of a lime-stone since the humidity of those tears I shed hath almost consumed me But can you believe it Madam in what manner it hath consumed me I dare no longer walk in the streets thus all on fire for fear the boyes should come about me with squibs for they 'l certainly take me for a past-bord figure that was got loose from some artificiall fireworks neither dare I show my self in the Country lest I should be thought to be one of the walking Hermes's that lead people to drowning In fine you may easily understand what all this means 't is Madam that if you do not come back and that quickly if you enquire after me at your return you 'l find that I am shut up in the Thuiberies and that my name is the Fire-beast which is showed to the people for mony you 'l then be
Mouth the very paper under the words the Criticks mutter that the great noise that you make in the world is no signe of a great wit that Empty vessells sound more then full ones and that perhaps by reason of the Concavity of your empty braine your mouth like to a Grot makes an ill distinguisht Eccho of all the sounds that strikes it But you must comfort your selfe for all this for that man that can hinder envy from biting vertue is yet unborn for I grant as they say that you are no great wit you are neverthelesse a great man what you are able by your very shaddow to black a whole tennis court none heares your stature spoken of but believe that one is a telling a story of a Cedar or a Fir-tree and others that know you more particularly provethat you have nothing of man but the voice assuring us that they have learnt by tradition that you are an Oake transplanted from the forrest of Doone 't is not by my advice that they give this testimony for I have told them a hundred times that t' was not likely that you were an Oake seeing the most learned all agreed that you are but a block for my part I that have been of a longer acquaintance with you maintaine to them that 't is very farre from truth to imagine that you are a tree for although your superior part which by reason of the situation is called your head doth no reasonable nor sensitive function yet I could not believe it to be of wood but I imagine that it was deprived of the use of its senses And because that one humane soul being not large enough to animate from one end to the other so vaste a Colosse nature was forced to leave the upper region desart And indeed is there any body that knowes not that when nature loged that which in others is called wit in your immense body for all her stretching and pulling she could never make it reach to your head your very Members are so prodigious that who considers them thinks you have two Giants hung to the bottom of your belly instead of thighs and your mouth is so wide that I am sometimes afraid that your head will fall into it in truth if t' were an Article of our faith to believe that you are a man I should have strong motives to suspect that to give life to your body they had been faine to put into it the universall soul of the world You must needs be something very great indeed since the whole Community of Broakers are employed to cloath you or else that those people seeking to sell their commodities and not being able to bring all the streets in Paris to the market have laden you with their fripperie that the market may walke about the streets but this reproach needs not trouble you contrarywise 't is very advantagious to you it makes you known to be a publique Person since you are cloathed at the publique charge besides many other things renders you very considerable without adding to them that as the Egyptians judged of their abundance by the thicknesse of the mud of Nilus after her overflow so may we by your good case suppute the number of illegitimate embraces that have been made in your suburbs Well but concerning the Tree I just now compared you to 't is said you are so fruitfull a one that there 's never a day but you bring forth But I know that these kinds of injuries come not near you and that your calumniators when the third coat of the Cards was your Picture durst not offer so many affronts to your face you then wore a blade that would have had satisfaction of such backbiters they would not have accused you of impudence as now they do when you was in a condition to change your colour so often These Sir in a manner are the abuses with which they persecute your lamentable reputation I would make a little longer Apology for them but that my paper being at an end I must be so to Permit me then to take my leave of you without the customary ceremonies for these persons that thus scorn you and whom I have a great esteem for would think that I were a servant to the Jamboncineux's servant if I had said at the bottom of this Letter that I am SIR Your Servant Tambourineux 22. Consolation for one of his friends upon the Eternity of his Father in Law THe Doctors better then I will one day ease you of the life of this person let them but alone their stroaks none can put by You 'l answer me without doubt That he hath already above a dozen times passed by the time of dying that the Parque forgot him and that having gon so far beyond him she is now loath and lasie to come back so far and fetch him No no Sir be in good hope till he hath lived nine hundred years the age of Methusalem But speak to him continually and that scoldingly roar play the devill thunder in the house let every thing be crosse to him and take some course to make him aweary of his life Why Artephius and the Sybill Cumea lived nothing in respect of him He was brought forth before Death was born and that 's the reason death dares not strike him for she 's afraid to kill her father and if this consideration did not hinder her she sees him so weak with age that he would not be able to go into th' other world Besides too I think another thing may be the reason which is that death who sees him do no action of life takes him rathtr for a statue then a living creature and thinks it belongs rather to time or fortune to overthrow him then to him After this Sir I much wonder that you should say that he being ready to close the circle of his daies being arived at that point where he first set forth he 's becomming a child again Ah Sir you jeast and for my part I cannot so much as believe that he ever was one What he a Boy No no he never was or Moses was out in his Calculation of the worlds creation Though if it be permitted us to name every thing so that can hardly die the functions of a child I grant you for he must indeed be more ignorant then a plant that knowes not how to die that which every thing that hath life understands without a Master Oh had he been but known by Aristotle that Philosopher would not have defined Man a rational Animal Those of Epicurus his sect which demonstrate that the Beasts have the use of reason must except this Ah! if it were but true that he were a beast But alas in the order of animated beings he is a little more then a Hartichoke and somewhat short of an Oyster insomuch that but that you think he hath no feeling I should believe him to be that which they call the Sensitive plant Confesse then that you
beliefe to the Possessed 't is seene enough by the contorsions that disturbe you and your corporall torments that you have the divell in you and 't is to little purpose that you think to free your selfe from the torments of hell by a strong imagination and haunting debauched places But we care not provided you lime none but old or barren ones because the coming of Antichrist startles us and you know the prophesie but you laugh master Ican you that believe in the Apocalyps as in the Mythologie say that hell is a foolish story to fright men withall as they use to fright Children by threatning to make them eate a piece of the Moon Confesse confesse that you are the Incomparable for expound a little how can you be impious and Bigot at the same time and weave with the thread of your life a mixed stuff of Superstition Athism Ah! master John my friend you 'l dye dancing to the Saints-bel indeed when we consider the joint peeces that compose the symmetry of your members we are so satisfied that we need not consult an Oracle to be assured and were your haire more cleane and upright then your Conscience your forehead cut into Lanes after the Modell of the fields of Beausse where the sun markes your flats by the shaddow of your furrowes as exactly as he shows the day-hours upon a sundiall your eyes under shelter of your bushie eye-browes that look like two precipices on the brink of a wood are so much sunke that if you live but a month longer you 'l look upon us with your Occiput to see them so red as they are one is perswaded that one sees two bloody Cometts and I find some resemblance a little above in your Eye-browes is discovered fixed starres that some call otherwise your face is shaded by a nose whose infection is the cause that you stink in all mens opinions and my shoo-maker assured me the other day that he took your cheeks for a peece of black Spanish leather nay I have suffered my tongue to say that the smallest haires of your Mustachoces charitably furnishes your Church with a holy water-brush this I think is somewhat neere in Hieroglyphick the Image that Constistutes your Horoscope I would proceed but expecting visiters I feared least I should omit telling you at the bottome of my Letter that which is not ordinarily set there that I am not nor ever will be Your Servant Mons r Ican 28. Against a Pedant SIR I Wonder that such a log as you who by your habit seems to be become but a great Charcoal should not yet blush and become red with the fire that burns you within Think at least when your bad Angel makes you rebell against me that my arme is not far from my head and that till now your own weaknesse and my generosity hath secured you although you are a very contemptible thing yet I 'le free my self of you if you become troublesom Give me not occasion then to remember that you are in the world and if you will live above a day call to minde often that I have forbid you to make me the object of your slanders my name fills a period but ill the thicknesse of your square waste would close it a great deal better You act Caesar when from your Pedagogist-Tribunall you see your little Monarchy tremble under your wooden Scepter But take heed that a Tyrant raises not up a Brutus for although you are the space of four hours upon the head of Emperours your Domination is not so strongly established but that the sound of a Bell destroyes it twice a day 'T is said you boast that you expose in all places your conscience and your salvation I believe this of your piety But to hazard your life for it I know you want courage and that you would not stake it against the Monarchy of the world You consult and plot my ruine but they are bitts that you cut out for others You would gladly from the shore in safety behold a ship wrack at Sea and I the whilst am condemned to the Pistoll by a Puritanicall pedant a Pedant in sacris who ought for an example if the image of a Pistoll had taken place in his thoughts to be exorcised Barbarous Schoolmaster what cause have I given you to wish me this ill You run over all the crimes perhaps which you are guilty of and then you think of accusing me of that impiety which your own memory taxes you withall But know that I know a thing which you know not and that thing is god and that one of the strongest arguments after those of faith that hath convinced me of his true existence is the consideration that were it not for a summary and soveraign goodnesse that reignes in the Universe thus wicked and weak as you are you could not have lived so long unpunished Besides I have learnt that some little works though much above yours hath caused in your timerous courage this passion that you thunder against me But in truth Sir I am ready to quarrell with my own imagination that she hath made my Satyr bite harder then yours although yours be the fruit that the best wits of the antients have sweat for You ought to be offended at Nature and not me that cannot help it for could I imagine that to have wit was to injure you You know besides that I was not in the belly of that Mare that conceived you to dispose to humanity those organs and the complexion that concurred to the making you a Horse I pretend not however that these truths that I preach to you should reflect upon the body of the University that glorious mother of Sciences of which if you are any member it is the shamefull one There is nothing in you that is not very deformed your very soul is black it being in mourning for the death of your conscience and your habit as its giblets keeps the same colour I confesse 't is true that a miserable Hypocondriack as you are cannot obscure the merit of the learned men of your profession and however a ridiculous vain-glory perswades you that you are the ablest Regent of the University I protest to you my good friend that if you are the greatest man in the Muses Academy you are beholden for it onely to the greatnesse of your members and that you are the greatest personage of your Colledge by the same right that St. Christopher is the greatest Saint in our Ladies Church 't is not but that if fortune and justice were agreed you would very well deserve to be the chief of four hundred Asses that are taught at your Colledge yea certainly you deserve it and I know that the Master of the high function whom whipping better becomes then you nor none to whom it more justly belongs and of that great number I know those that would give ten pound to flea you and if you 'l believe me take them at their
had not enough for the whole City of this poor Prince was all burnt I saw there abundance of Lawyers condemned to the fire that they might see clear into some businesses too obscure As for the wise-men they were put with the Architects as persons that in all things ought to use Rule and Compasse 'T was impossible to get the Drugsters from the Furies so fraid were they to want Torches I much wondred to meet Tiberius who expecting to be placed in the meane time lay-upon some stones to rest himself I askt him if 't would not be more for his ease to lye upon a bed I should fear said he that the heat of the feathers would do me more hurt then the stones In the mean while Agripina Nero's Mother conjured him to revenge her quarrell with Sencca who publisht that she had had four Children since her Marriage she appeared furious and almost out of her senses but Nero quieted her by these words Madame one must believe but halfe what a slaunderer saith The Parques were contented to be with poore Country wenches that feed their husbands with their distaffes when they were told that those Country girles as well as they had spun mens lives There came thither certaine Thrashers and because they wanted flails or scourges they gave them Attila to make use of instead of others The impudent persons associated themselves with the keepers of Lions that they might learne of them never to change colour I should have seen a great deale more if my Clock striking Eleaven had not waked me and put me in mind that at all houres of the night and day I am and will ever be untill my last sleepe SIR Your most affectionate servant 36. Against the Frondeurs or Slingers THe Reader must take notice that this Letter was sent during the siege of Paris and during the Peoples greatest animosityes against the Cardinal one must not then wonder to find things not altogether so fit for the present Estate of Affaires which have much changed since that time To Mr. D. L. M. L. V. L. F. SIR 'T Is true I am a Mazarin 't is neither fear nor hopes that makes me so ingenuously confesse it 't is the pleasure that I take in a truth when I pronounce it I love to make it known if not as much as I can at leastwise as much as I dare and I have such an Antipathy to his adversaries that to give them justly the lye I could with a good heart come from t'other world Nature took so little care to make me a good Courtiers that she gave me but one tongue for my heart and for my fortune if I had been desirous of the Applauses of Paris or pretended to the Reputation of being Eloquent I should have writ in favour of the slingers because there is nothing more Easie to perswade the people then that which is easie to believe But as there is nothing too that more show a vulgar soul then to be of the same opinion with the vulgar I resist as much as possible the rapidity of the torrent that I may not be carried away with the stream and to begin I declare to you once more that I am a Mazarin I am not however so unreasonable as not to declare to you the cause why I betook my selfe to your party know then that t' was because I found it the Justest and because 't is true that nothing can acquit us of the obedience we owe to our lawfull Soveraign for however the slingers stone us for it I pretend to returne it them so smartly that I 'le drive them from all the Forts that their calumny hath reared against his Eminence The first thing that in vaine the Poets of Pont neuf let fly against the reputation of this great Person was the alleadging that he was an Italian To that I answer not to these Heroes of blotted Paper but to reasonable Persons that deserve to be disabused that an honest man is neither a French man a Dutch man nor a Spaniard he is a Cosmopolite a Citizen of the world and his Country is every where but I grant that the Cardinall is a stranger are we not the more obliged to him that he will leave his domestick Gods to defend ours Besides if he were a naturall Sicilian as they believe he is not for all that a vassail of the King of Spain for History is witnesse that our Lillies have more right to the soveraignity of that state then the Castles of Castile But they are very ill in form'd of his Cradle for although the family of the Mazarins was originally Sicilians the Cardinal was born in Rome and since he is Citizen of a neuter towne he might consequently engage himselfe for the interest of that nation he pleased to make choice of 't is well known that the people of Rome and the nobles and Cardinals do thus take upon them the particular protection of a king or Prince or a Republique there are some that hold for France others for Spaine and others for other Soveraignes and his Eminence embracing the justnesse of our Cause hath followed the example of the Almighty who alwayes espouses the interest of the just Certainly the happy successes of our Armies hath well enough showed both the Excellency of his choice and the justnesse of our cause and our kingdome swelling under his Administration hath witnessed that for his sake heaven hath undertaken our quarrel and indeed almost all those that desired his departure have since been found Pensioners to the Enemies of this Crowne and the glorious actions of our great Cardinal which multiply his rayes hath plainly showed that his lustre dazeling and hurting their eyes they have imitated the woolvs in the Fable that promised the sheep not to meddle with them if they would send away the dog from their sheepe-fold Well these State-reformers who cover their black designs with the Cloak of publique Benefit have nothing else to say but that the Cardinal is an Italian yeas But what i' st they complaine of he advances none but French and those whose greatnesse cannot have any Eclipse he hath not made any Creature and we see at Court thirty Italians Persons of quality of great families some drawne hither by their neerenesse of blood to him others by his renoune that have been heer idle this ten yeares because he thought them not fit for the Kings service In the meane time what wisdome soever he makes use of in the Conduct of the Government it doth not please our Politique Citizens they cry down his Administration But 't is no new thing for the unfortunate to impute to the good fortune of others the ill offices of their own In that envious humour that gnawes them they 'l complaine that they have nothing to complaine of because his Eminence hath raised no Creatures they call him ungratefull if he had advanced any they would have accused him of ambition Because he hath carried our
are to blame to be weary of his life he hath not yet lived he hath onely slept have patience at least till he hath taken a nap Hath no body told him are you sure that death and sleep are brothers He speaks perhaps a scrupule being tender conscience'd having enjoyed me to have any thing to do with t'other Infer not hence that I would by this prove that the person of whom we speak is a foolish man not at all he is nothing lesse then a man For however he may have been baptized like us that 's a priviledge the parish-Bells enjoy as well as he I could speak of his life till I end my own to allay your griefs but sleep begins to cause so great weaknesses in my hand that my head for company falls upon my ear Ah as I live I write I know not what Farewell good-night SIR Your Servant 23. Against a Plagiary SIR SInce our friend planders our Conceptions 't is a signe he esteems us he would not take them if he did not believe them good and we are much to blame to take it ill that having no children of his own he adopts ours That which troubles me for you know that I am a revenger of wrongs and am very much enclined to distributive Justice is to see him attribute to his wicked Imagination the good services done him by his Memory and that he calls himself the father of a thousand high fancies which at most he hath been but a midwife to often This Sir let us brag that we write better then he whilst he writes just as we do and laugh to see him at this age have a writing-Master by him since by it he doth us no other mischief then to render our works more legible We ought contrariwise receive with respect those wise and morall advertisments by which he endeavours to reclaim the extravagances of our youth yea certainly we ought to give more faith to them and make no more doubt of them then of the Evangelists for all the world knowes they are not things that he hath devised In troth to have such a friend is to maintain a Presse at an easie rate For my part I imagine for all his great Manuscripts that if after his death they make an Inventorie of his Study of Books that is of those that proceeded from his own brain all his works together taking away that which is not his will make a Library of white paper He assumes the spoils of the dead and he believes to have invented that which he remembers But 't is but an ill proof of the noble extraction of his thoughts to derive their antiquity but from a man that is still alive But by this he concludes for the Metempsychosis and shews that if he should make use of what Socrates was the Author of he should not rob him he himselfe having formerly been the same Socrates that invented them And then hath he not memory enough to be rich with that onely why he hath one so vast that he remembers that which was said thirty Ages before he was in the world Obtain of him for me I that am a little more sensible then the dead a permission to date my thoughts that my posterity may not remain doubtfull There was heretofore a goddesse Eccho this without doubt must be the god for like her he never saies any thing but what others have said before him and repeats it so verbatim that transcribing the other day one of my Letters he cal'd it composing he had the most ado in the world to subscribe Your servant Beaulieu because at the end of it there was Your Servant De Bergerac 24. Another on the same subject SIR AFter having put in a heat against us this man that is nothing but flegme do we not fear that one of these daies they will accuse us of burning the River This water-wit murmurs continually like the fountains yet no body understands what he saies Ah! Sir what a strange accident this man makes me foresee at the end of the world which is that if he dies not till his memory have an end the resurrection trumpets will never be silent this onely faculty in him leaves room for no other and he is so great a persecutor of common sense that he makes me suspect that the universall judgment was promised that such as he might have some who had none in particular And to speak ingenuously who ever sends him out of this world will be much to blame to dispatch him without reason Neverthelesse he speaks as much as all Authors for they all seem to have spoken but for him He never opens his mouth but we find a theft in it and he is so accustomed to thieving that when he holds his tongue 't is that he may steal from those that are dumb For all this ours is but a false valour and we unjustly share the advantages of the combat to oppose our understandings that have three faculties to his that hath but one Therefore it is that he hath a great vacuum in his head he ought to be pardoned since it was impossible for Nature to fill it with a third part of a reasonable soul But to make amends for that he never lets it sleep he still employes it in undressing And those great Philosophers who by professing poverty thought to have freed themselves from contribution pay him every day the very poorest amongst them a tax of ten Conceptions and this wretched wit-stealer lets not one escape but imposes on them according to the extent of their income 'T is to little purpose that they hide themselves he 'l make them disburse and speak English Nay sometimes they must be content to see their whole Estate confiscated when they have not wherewithall to pay the tax He exercises these rapines in safety for Greece and Italy being under other Princes he shall not be questioned in England for the robberies he hath done them I believe he thinks because that the Heathens are our enemies that what he plunders them of is lawfull prize This Sir is the reason that in every page of his Epistles we see the Cameter of the living and of the dead after this you need not doubt but that if at the resurrection every one takes that which belongs to him the sharing of his writings wil be the last difference among men After he hath been five of six daies in our companies rifling us more laden with points of wit then a Porcupine he goes and sticks them in his Epigrams and Sonnets like Pins into a Cushamet Yet for all this he boasts that there is nothing in his Writings that doth not as justly belong to him as the Paper and Ink which he paid for that the twenty four Letters of the Alphabet are as much his as ours and consequently the disposition of them And that Aristotle being dead he may lawfully seize upon his books since his lands which are immoveables are not now without Masters