Some say that she was a natural daughter of his, that he took with
him everywhere; others think that she was an automaton manufactured
with inimitable art. As a fact she was a Salamander, whom that
clever man had taken as his lady love. He never left her. During a
voyage in the Dutch Sea he took her with him on board, shut in a box
of precious wood lined with the softest satin. The form of this box,
and the precaution with which M. Descartes took care of it, drew the
attention of the captain, who, while the philosopher was asleep,
raised the cover and discovered the Salamander. This ignorant, rude
fellow imagined that such a marvellous creature was the creation of
the devil. In his dismay, he threw it into the sea. But you will
easily believe that the beautiful little person was not drowned, and
that it was no trouble to her to rejoin M. Descartes. She remained
faithful to him during his natural life, and when he died she left
this world never more to return.

"I give you this example, chosen from many, to make you acquainted
with the loves between philosophers and Salamanders. These loves are
too sublime to be in need of contracts, and you will agree that the
ridiculous display usual at human weddings would be entirely out of
place at such unions. It would be indeed fine, if a proctor in a wig
and a fat priest put their noses together over it! That sort of
gentleman is good only to join vulgar man to woman. The marriages of
Salamanders and sages have witnesses more august. The aerial people
celebrate them in ships which, moved by celestial breath, glide,
their sterns crowned with roses, to the sound of harps, on invisible
waves. But do not believe that, not being entered in a dirty
register in a shabby vestry, they would be of little solidity and
could be easily torn asunder. They have for guarantors the spirits
who gambol on the clouds whence flashes the lightning and roars the