Possibly Jacques Tournebroche, whose simplicity we know, did not put himself all these questions in reference to the little book under his hand. It would be an insult to think that he had an exaggerated opinion of himself. I think I know him. I have meditated over his book. Everything he says, and everything he doesn’t say, betrays an exquisite modesty of soul. If, however, he was not without knowledge of his talent, he knew also that it is precisely talent that is least pardonable. In people of note we tolerate easily bareness of soul and falseheartedness. We are quite content that they should be bad or cowardly, and their good-luck even does not raise over much envy so long as it is not merited. Mediocrities are at once raised up, and carried along, by the surrounding nobodies who are honoured in them. The success of a commonplace person disturbs nobody. Rather, it secretly flatters the mob. But there is an insolence of talent which is expiated by dumb hatred, and calumnies not loud but deep. If Jacques Tournebroche consciously renounced the painful honour of irritating the foolish and the wicked by eloquent writing, one can only admire his good sense, and hold him the worthy scholar of a master who knew mankind. However it may be, the manuscript of Jacques Tournebroche, being left unpublished, was lost for more than a century. I had the extraordinary good luck to find it again at a general broker’s on the Boulevard Montparnasse, who spreads behind the dirtied panes of his shop, _croix du Lis_, _médailles de Sainte-Hélène_, and _decorations de Juillet_, without a suspicion that he is furnishing the generations a melancholy lesson on peacemaking. This manuscript was published under my care in 1893, under the title: _La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque_. I refer the reader to it. He will find there more novelties than he looks for ordinarily in an old book. But it is not with that book that we have to do here. Jacques Tournebroche was not content to make known the doings and sayings of his master in a connected recital. He was careful to collect much discourse and conversation of Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard that had not found place in the memoirs (for that is the name we must give to _La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque_) and he made a little note-book of it, which has fallen into my hands along with his other papers.