The pungent lines excited a violent clamour among the Jesuits, and no pains were spared to trace the writer. The juvenile offender was discovered, and was shut up in the Bastile. After having been confined there for a long while, he was transferred to the citadel of St. Marguerite, on the coast of Provence. There he continued for several years; after which he was taken back to the Bastile. One-and-thirty years he passed in this manner, and the remainder of his life would doubtless have been consumed in the same way, had he not, in 1705, become sole heir to the estates of his family. The confessor of the Bastile, who was a jesuit, now remonstrated with his brethren on the impolicy of keeping in prison an individual from whom, by procuring his release, they might reap such a golden harvest. His advice was taken, and the captive was set free at their intercession. There can be no doubt that their tardy and interested mercy received a liberal reward. Among the fellow prisoners of the nameless satirist of the jesuits was, for a short time, another writer of verses, but verses of a very different kind. The person in question was Charles Dassouci, who ludicrously designated himself as “Emperor of the Burlesque, the first of that name.” He was born at Paris, about 1604, and was the son of a barrister. His bringing up, and his early habits, were not calculated to make him an estimable member of society. His parents were separated, and the tyranny of a female, who was at once the servant and the concubine of his father, drove him from his home. When he was only nine years old, he wandered to Calais, where he passed himself off as an adept in astrology, the son of Cesar, that dealer in magic whose fate has been narrated in the preceding chapter. The boy having, by the power of imagination, worked a cure upon a hypochondriacal individual, the wise people of Calais considered this fact to be a decisive proof of his intercourse with the devil, and were about to throw him into the sea, but he was saved by some of his friends, who conveyed him privately out of the place. After having led a roving life for some time, he became player on the lute and singer to Christina, Duchess of Savoy, the daughter of Henry IV. In 1640, he was introduced to Louis XIII., who gave him the same situation that he had filled in the household of the duchess, and he was continued in it during the minority of Louis XIV. Resolving to return to Turin, he quitted Paris in 1655; but, before his departure from the kingdom, he visited various parts in the south of France. He was accompanied every where by two handsome youths, called his musical pages; his connexion with whom afforded to his enemies a reason, or a pretext, for fixing a deep stain on his moral character. Failing to obtain patronage at Turin, he went to Rome, and there he was put into the prison of the Inquisition, for having satirized some powerful prelates.