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