Greek text, full of abbreviations and ligatures which at first gave
me the effect of an illegible scrawl. But M. Coignard, having put on
his barnacles and placed the book at the necessary distance, began
to read the characters easily; they looked more like balls of thread
that had been unrolled by a kitten than the simple and quiet letters
of my St John Chrysostom, out of which I studied the language of
Plato and the New Testament. Having come to the end of his reading
he said:

"Sir, this passage is to be translated as: _Those of the Egyptians
who are well informed study first the writings called epistolographia,
then the hieratic, of which the hierogrammatists make use, and
finally the hieroglyphics._"

And then taking off his barnacles and shaking them triumphantly he
continued:

"Ah! Ah! Master Philosopher, I am not to be taken as a greenhorn.
This is an extract of the fifth book of the _Stromata_, the
author of which, Clement of Alexandria, is not mentioned in the
martyrology, for different reasons, which His Holiness Benedict XI.
has indicated, the principal of which is, that this Father was often
erroneous in matters of faith. It may be supposed that this
exclusion was not sensibly felt by him, if one takes into
consideration what philosophical estrangement had during his
lifetime inspired this martyr. He gave preference to _exile_
and took care to save his persecutors a crime, because he was a very
honest man. His style of writing was not elegant; his genius was
lively, his morals were pure, even austere. He had a very pronounced
liking for allegories and for lettuces."