friendship.




CHAPTER III

The Story of the Abbe's Life


"As you see me," he said, "or rather as you do not see me, young,
slender, with ardent eyes and black hair, I was a teacher of liberal
arts at the College of Beauvais under Messrs Dugue, Guerin, Coffin
and Baffier. I had been ordained, and expected to make a big name in
letters. But a woman upset my hopes. Her name was Nicole Pigoreau
and she kept a bookseller's shop at the _Golden Bible_ on the
square near the college. I went there frequently to thumb the books
she received from Holland and also those bipontic editions
illustrated with notes, comments and commentaries of great
erudition. I was amiable and Mistress Pigoreau became aware of it,
which was my misfortune.

"She had been pretty, and still knew how to be pleasing. Her eyes
spoke. One day the Cicero, Livy, Plato and the Aristotle,
Thucydides, Polybius and Varro, the Epictetus, Seneca, Boethius and
Cassiodorus, the Homer, AEschylus. Sophocles, Euripides, Plautus and
Terence, the Diodorus of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, St
John Chrysostom and St Basil, St Jerome and St Augustine, Erasmus,
Saumaise, Turnebe and Scaliger, St Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure,
Bossuet dragging Ferri with him, Lenain, Godefroy, Mezeray,