, and
made of our poor Abbe a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one
of his letters; and who could be in better humour?

"I have lived to thirty: if I reach forty, I shall only add many
miseries to those which I have endured these last eight or nine years.
My person was well made, though short; my disorder has shortened it
still more by a foot. My head is a little broad for my shape; my face is
full enough for my body to appear very meagre; I have hair enough to
render a wig unnecessary; I have got many white hairs, in spite of the
proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the colour of
wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and thighs first formed an
obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral angle, and at length, an acute
one. My thighs and body form another; and my head, always dropping on my
breast, makes me not ill represent a Z. I have got my arms shortened as
well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a word, I am an
abridgment of human miseries."

He had the free use of nothing but his tongue and his hands; and he
wrote on a portfolio placed on his knees.

Balzac said of Scarron, that he had gone further in insensibility than
the Stoics, who were satisfied in appearing insensible to pain; but
Scarron was gay, and amused all the world with his sufferings.

He pourtrays himself thus humorously in his address to the queen:--

Je ne regard plus qu'en bas,
Je suis torticolis, j'ai la tete penchante;
Ma mine devient si plaisante
Que quand on en riroit, je ne m'en plaindrois pas.

"I can only see under me; I am wry-necked; my head hangs down; my
appearance is so droll, that if people laugh, I shall not
complain."

He says elsewhere,

Parmi les torticolis
Je passe pour un des plus jolis.

"Among your wry-necked people I pass for one of the handsomest."

After having suffered this distortion of shape, and these acute pains
for four years, he quitted his usual residence, the quarter du Marais,
for the baths of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. He took leave of his
friends, by addressing some verses to them, entitled, _Adieu aux
Marais_; in which he describes several celebrated persons. When he was
brought into the street in a chair, the pleasure of seeing himself there
once more overcame the pains which the motion occasioned, and he has
celebrated the transport by an ode, which has for title, "The Way from
le Marais to th