CAR. Ah, sir, the door-keepers are such terrible fellows! They treat men
of learning like snobbs and butts; I can never get beyond the
guard-room. The ill-treatment I am compelled to suffer would make me
withdraw from court for ever, if I had not conceived the certain hope
that you will be my Mecaeaenas with the King. Yes, your influence is to
me a certain means ...

ER. Well, then, give it me; I will present it.

CAR. Here it is. But at least, hear it read.

ER. No ...

CAR. That you may be acquainted with it, sir, I beg.

"TO THE KING.

"_Sire,--Your most humble, most obedient, most faithful and most
learned subject and servant, Caritides, a Frenchman by birth, a
Greek_

[Footnote: The original has _Grec_, a Greek. Can Caritides have
wished to allude to the _graeaca fides_? _Grec_ means also a
cheat at cards, and is said to owe its name to a certain Apoulos, a
knight of Greek origin, who was caught in the very act of cheating at
play in the latter days of Louis XIV.'s reign, even in the palace of the
_grand monarque_.]

_by profession, having considered the great and notable abuses which
are perpetrated in the inscriptions on the signs of houses, shops,