O vanity of vanities! would it be believed that, under the democratic reign of the Encyclopoedia, a man like Crebillon, ennobled by his own talents and genius, could have thus hugged himself in the possession of a vain and deceitful chimera! For truth compels us to own that, from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, the Jolyots were never any thing more or less than honest innkeepers, who sold their wine unadulterated, as it was procured from the black or golden grapes of the Burgundy hills. Meanwhile Crebillon, finding that his titles of nobility were uncontested, pushed his aristocratic weakness so far as to affirm one day that his family bore on its shield an eagle, or, on a field, azure, holding in its beak a lily, proper, leaved and sustained, argent. All went, however, according to his wishes; his son allied himself by an unexpected marriage to one of the first families of England. The old tragic poet could then pass into the other world with the consoling reflection that he left behind him here below a name not only honored in the world of letters, but inscribed also in the golden muster-roll of the French nobility. But unfortunately for poor Crebillon's family tree, about a century after the creation of this mushroom nobility--which, like the majority of the nobilities of the eighteenth century, had its foundation in the sand--a certain officious antiquary, who happened at the time to have nothing better to do, bethought himself one day of inquiring into the validity of his claim. He devoted to this strange occupation several years of precious time. By dint of shaking the dust from off the archives of Dijon and Nuits, and of rummaging the minutes of the notaries of the department, he succeeded at length in ferreting out the genealogical tree of the Jolyot family. Some, the most glorious of its members, had been notaries, others had been innkeepers. Shade of Crebillon, pardon this impious archæologist, who thus, with ruthless hands, destroyed "at one fell swoop" the brilliant scaffolding of your vanity! Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon was born at Dijon, on the 13th of February, 1674; like Corneille, Bossuet, and Voltaire, he studied at the Jesuits' college of his native town. It is well known that in all their seminaries, the Jesuits kept secret registers, wherein they inscribed, under the name of each pupil, certain notes in Latin upon his intellect and character. It was the Abbé d'Olivet who, it is said, inscribed the note referring to Crebillon:--"_Puer ingeniosus sed insignis nebulo._" But it must be said that the collegiate establishments of the holy brotherhood housed certain pedagogues, who abused their right of pronouncing judgment on the scholars. Crebillon, after all, was but a lively, frolicksome child, free and unreserved to excess in manners and speech.