MONTAIGNE: In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason of my cook. Mat never twitched God by the sleeve and swore He should not have his own way. SCALIGER: M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine of predestination? MONTAIGNE: I should not understand it if I had; and I would not break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern. Would it make me honester or happier, or, in other things, wiser? SCALIGER: I do not know whether it would materially. MONTAIGNE: I should be an egregious fool, then, to care about it. Come, walk about with me; after a ride you can do nothing better to take off fatigue. I can show you nothing but my house and my dairy. SCALIGER: Permit me to look a little at those banners. They remind me of my own family, we being descended from the great Cane della Scala, Prince of Verona, and from the House of Hapsburg, as you must have heard from my father. MONTAIGNE: What signifies it to the world whether the great Cane was tied to his grandmother or not? As for the House of Hapsburg, if you could put together as many such houses as would make up a city larger than Cairo, they would not be worth his study, or a sheet of paper on the table of it. _III.--Bossuet and the Duchesse de Fontanges_ BOSSUET: Mademoiselle, it is the king's desire that I compliment you on the elevation you have attained. FONTANGES: O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me was, "Angélique! do not forget to compliment monseigneur the bishop on the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank sufficient to confess you, now you are duchess." You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess to you, directly. BOSSUET: Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young lady? FONTANGES: What is that? BOSSUET: Do you hate sin? FONTANGES: Very much. BOSSUET: Do you hate the world? FONTANGES: A good deal of it; all Picardy, for example, and all Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and women! BOSSUET: I would say in plain language, do you hate the flesh and the devil? FONTANGES: Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the while, I will tell him so--"I hate you, beast!" There now. As for flesh, I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt, nor do anything that I know of. BOSSUET: Mademoiselle Marie Angélique de Scoraille de Rousille, Duchesse de Fontanges! Do you hate titles, and dignities, and yourself? FONTANGES: Myself! Does anyone hate me? Why should I be the first? Hatred is the worst thing in the world; it makes one so very ugly. BOSSUET: We must detest our bodies if we would save our souls.