work.

"It would have depended on myself alone to get old and grey in
studies and peace with the right reverend prelate, but I became
enamoured of the waiting-maid of the bailiff's lady. Do not blame me
severely. Dark she was, buxom, vivacious, fresh. St Pacomus himself
would have loved her. One day she took a seat in the stage coach to
travel to Paris in quest of luck. I followed her. But I did not
succeed as well as she did. On her recommendation I entered the
service of Mistress de Saint Ernest, an opera dancer, who, aware of
my talents, ordered me to write after her dictation a lampoon on
Mademoiselle Davilliers, against whom she had some grievance. I was
a pretty good secretary, and well deserved the fifty crowns she had
promised me. The book was printed at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Key,
with an allegoric frontispiece, and Mademoiselle Davilliers received
the first copy of it just when she went on the stage to sing the
great aria of Armida.

"Anger made her voice hoarse and shaky. She sang false and was
hooted. Her song ended, she ran as she was, in powder and hoop
petticoats, to the Intendant of the Privy Purse, who could not
refuse her anything. She fell on her knees before him, shed abundant
tears and shouted for vengeance. And soon it became known that the
blow was struck by Mistress de Saint Ernest.

"Questioned, hard pressed, sharply threatened, she denounced me as
the author, and I was put into the Bastille, where I remained four
years. There I found some consolation in reading Boethius and
Cassiodorus.