The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-01 00:00:00

SCARRON.

"Whatever was.the origin of his maladies, his form,
to use his own words, had become bent like a Z.' My
legs,' he adds, first made an obtuse angle with my
thighs, then a right and at last an acute angle; my thighs
made another with my body. My bead is bent upon
my chest ; my arms ere contracted as well as my legs,
and my fingers as well as my arms. I am, in truth, a
pretty complete abridgment of human misery.' His
bead was too big for his diminutive stature, one eye was
set deeper than the other, and his teeth were the colour
of wood. At the time of his marriage he could only
move with freedom his hand, tongue, and eyes. His
days were passed in a chair with a hood, and so com-
pletely was he the abridgment of man be describes him•
self that his wife had to kneel to look in his face. He
could not be moved without screaming from pain, nor
sleep without taking opium."

As the Quarterly observes, there is something
wonderfully touching after the perusal of this
account of his deplorable condition, to read the
epitaph written upon himself by the unfortunate
cripple :

" Tread softly—make no noise
To break his slumbers deep;
Poor Scarron here enjoys
His first calm night of sleep."

In the October of 1660, eight years after his mar-
riage, Scarron expired. Subsequently his widow
obtained a pension of 2,000 livres—a pension
dropped for a Mule in 1666, but speedily renewed
by King Louis XIV., who, later on, namely in
1674, presented Madame Scarron with the
estate of Maintenon, worth 15,000 livres a-year,
a gift which ever after changed her name to that
more famous one by which she is known in history,
—the name, that is, of Madame de Maintenon. This
princely gift being in reward for the care taken by
the future wife of Louis XIV. of his Majesty's
illegitimate children, the offspring of Madame de
Montespan, the successful rival of the lovely and
uckless Duchesse de la Valliere. The care of the
royal bastards devolved upon Scarron's widow in
1670, and either in 1684 or 1685, the Queen hav-
ing expired, July 30, 1683, in the arms of Madame
de Maintenon, the latttr was married to the Grand
Monarque Louis the Magnificent ! At that period
Louis XIV. was forty-five, and Madame de Main-
tenon forty-eight—so that the disparity of years
was this time reversed for the mature Francoise !
It was not until the 15th of August, 1719—nearly
four years after the death of the great Louis, and
exactly fifty years, to the very day, before the
birth of the great Napoleon—that Madame de
Maintenon calmly breathed her last at Saint Cyr,
at the ripe age of eighty-four. In addition to the
articles already particularised, there are in the pre-
sent number of the Quarterly two elaborate contri.
butions—the one relating to the " Crystal Palace,"
the other to " Food and its Adulterations ;" be-
sides which may be mentioned an historical paper
on " Venetian Despatches," and a sylvan one en-
titled "The Forester," and, to crown all, a politi-
c tl disquisition upon " Public Affairs," in reference
to the recent situation of things generally—,a Tory
manifesto, reflecting peculiar honour upon the
Quarterly by reason of the calm, and just, and per-
fectly dispassionate. tone in which every syllable of
it has been dictated.

Bradshaw's Illustrated Guide through Paris.

W. J. Adams.

A positively invaluable hand-book for English
visitors to Paris, in which all that can be seen theie
and in its environs, and how to see it with the
least fatigue, time, and expense, is clearly pointed
out. A splendid map of the French empire, and a
beautiful plan of Paris and its environs, together
with a number of illustrations (on steel), accompany
the work.