faith. He had a wide knowledge of the world, obtained by the
frequentation of all sorts of companies. This experience would have
served him well with the Roman histories he, like M. Rollin, would
doubtless have composed should he have had time and leisure, and if
his life could have been better matched to his genius. What I shall
relate of this excellent man will be the ornament of these memoirs.
And like Aulus Gellius, who culled the most beautiful sayings of the
philosophers into his "Attic Nights," and him who put the best
fables of the Greeks into the "Metamorphoses," I will do a bee's
work and gather exquisite honey. But I do not flatter myself to be
the rival of those two great authors, because I draw all my wealth
from my own life's recollections and not from an abundance of
reading. What I furnish out of my own stock is good faith. Whenever
some curious person shall read my memoirs he will easily recognise
that a candid soul alone could express itself in language so plain
and unaffected. Where and with whomsoever I have lived I have always
been considered to be entirely artless. These writings cannot but
confirm it after my death.




CHAPTER II

My Home at the Queen Pedauque Cookshop--I turn the Spit and learn to
read--Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard.


My name is Elme Laurent Jacques Menetrier. My father, Leonard
Menetrier, kept a cookshop at the sign of _Queen Pedauque,_