taking his name and even by disguising
it."

The king (who had taken the name of Augustus himself) looked grave and
said,--

"What sovereigns have adopted a disguised form of the name Augustus?"

"The first king of Sweden, who called himself Gustavus, which is only an
anagram of Augustus."

"That is a very amusing idea, and worth more than all the tales we have
told. Where did you find that?"

"In a manuscript at Wolfenbuttel."

The king laughed loudly, though he himself had been citing manuscripts.
But he returned to the charge and said,--

"Can you cite any passage of Horace (not in manuscript) where he shews
his talent for delicacy and satire?"

"Sir, I could quote several passages, but here is one which seems to me
very good: 'Coyam rege', says the poet, 'sua de paupertate tacentes, plus
quan pocentes ferent."

"True indeed," said the king, with a smile.

Madame Schmit, who did not know Latin, and inherited curiosity from her
mother, and eventually from Eve, asked the bishop what it meant, and he
thus translated it:

"They that speak not of their necessities in the presence of a king, gain
more than they that are ever asking."

The lady remarked that she saw nothing satirical in this.

After this it was my turn to be silent again; but the king began to talk
about Ariosto, and expressed a desire to read it with me. I replied with
an inclination of the head, and Horace's words: 'Tempora quoeram'.

Next morning, as I was coming out from mass, the generous and unfortunate
Stanislas Augustus gave me his hand to kiss, and at the same time slid a
roll of money into my hand, saying,--

"Thank no one but Horace, and don't tell anyone about it."

The roll contained two hundred ducats, and I immediately paid off my
debts. Since then I went almost every morning to the king's closet, where
he was always glad to see his courtiers, but there was no more said about
reading Ariosto. He knew Italian, but not enough to speak it, and still
less to appreciate the beauties of the great poet. When I think of this
worthy prince, and of the great qualities he possessed as a man, I cannot
understand how he came to commit so many errors as a king. Perhaps the
least of them all was that he allowed himself to survive his country. As
he could not find a friend to kill him, I think he should have killed
himself. But indeed he had no need to ask a friend to do him this
service; he should have imitated the great Kosciuszko, and