This preference appeared singular to me and I conceived as much
surprise as disgust at it. But I was not the disciple of M. Jerome
Coignard for nothing. This incomparable teacher had formed my mind
to meditate. I recalled to myself the satyrs one can see in gardens
carrying off nymphs, and reflected that if Catherine was made like a
nymph, those satyrs, at least as they are represented to us, are as
horrible as yonder Capuchin. And I concluded that I ought not to be
so very much astonished by what I had just seen. My vexation,
however, was not dissipated by my reason, doubtless because it had
not its source there. These meditations got me along through the
shadows of the night and the mud of the thaw to the road of Saint
Germain, where I met M. Jerome Coignard, who was returning home to
the Cross of the Sablons after having supped in town.

"My boy," he said, "I have conversed of Zosimus and the gnostics at
the table of a very learned ecclesiastic, quite another Peiresc. The
wine was coarse and the fare but middling, but nectar and ambrosia
floated through the discourse."

Then my dear tutor spoke of the Panopolitan with an inconceivable
eloquence. Alas! I listened badly, thinking of that drop of
moonlight which had this very night fallen on the lips of Catherine
the lacemaker.

At last he came to a stop and I asked on what foundation the Greeks
had established the liking of the nymphs for satyrs. My teacher was
so widely learned that he was always ready to reply to all
questions. He told me: