He rang his bell, and having told one of his gentlemen to send up a seat,
a servant brought in a stool. A seat without a back and without arms! It
made me quite angry. I cut my story short, told it badly, and had
finished in a quarter of an hour.

"I write better than you speak," said he.

"My lord, I never speak well except when I am at my ease."

"But you are not afraid of me?"

"No, my lord, a true man and a philosopher can never make me afraid; but
this stool of yours . . . ."

"You like to be at your ease, above all things."

"Take this, it is the funeral oration of Prince Eugene; I make you a
present of it. I hope you will approve of my Latinity. You can kiss the
Pope's feet tomorrow at ten o'clock."

When I got home, as I reflected on the character of this strange
cardinal--a wit, haughty, vain, and boastful, I resolved to make him a
fine present. It was the 'Pandectarum liber unicus' which M. de F. had
given me at Berne, and which I did not know what to do with. It was a
folio well printed on fine paper, choicely bound, and in perfect
preservation. As chief librarian the present should be a valuable one to
him, all the more as he had a large private library, of which my friend
the Abbe Winckelmann was librarian. I therefore wrote a short Latin
letter, which I enclosed in another to Winckelmann, whom I begged to