The Prince on another occasion thought himself offended by the Abbé de Voisenon; Voisenon, hearing of this, went to Court to exculpate himself. As soon as the Prince saw him he turned away from him. "Thank God!" said Voisenon, "I have been misinformed, sir; your highness does not treat me as if I were an enemy." "How do you see that, M. Abbé?" said his highness coldly over his shoulder. "Because, sir," answered the Abbé, "your highness never turns your back upon an enemy." "My dear Abbé," exclaimed the Prince and Field-Marshal, turning round and taking him by the hand, "it is quite impossible for any man to be angry with you." A CLASSICAL ASS [Sidenote: _Percy Anecdotes_] The ass, though the dullest of all unlaughing animals, is reported to have once accomplished a great feat in the way of exciting laughter. Marcus Crassus, the grandfather of the hero of that name, who fell in the Parthian War, was a person of such immovable gravity of countenance that, in the whole course of his life, he was never known to laugh but once, and hence was surnamed Agelastus. Not all that the wittiest men of his time could say, nor aught that comedy or farce could produce on the stage, was ever known to call up more than a smile on his iron-bound countenance. Happening one day, however, to stray into the fields, he espied an ass browsing on thistles; and in this there appears to have been something so eminently ridiculous in those days that the man who never laughed before could not help laughing at it outright. It was but the burst of a moment; Agelastus immediately recovered himself, and never laughed again. MEMORY [Sidenote: _Percy Anecdotes_] A player being reproached by Rich for having forgot some of the words in "The Beggar's Opera," on the fifty-third night of its performance, cried out, "What! do you think one can remember a thing for ever?" "COME IN HERE" [Sidenote: _Percy Anecdotes_]