Every means had been employed in vain to restore the use of his limbs. He had been subjected to a severe disciplinary course of medicine, at length he sent away all his doctors, declaring that he preferred the disease to the treatment, and came to Paris, where the fame of his wit had preceded him. There he had a chair made on his own plan, and one day, visiting Anne of Austria in this chair, she asked him, charmed as she was with his wit, if he did not wish for a title. “Yes, your majesty, there is a title which I covet much,” replied Scarron. “And what is that?” “That of being _your_ invalid,” answered Scarron. So he was called the queen’s invalid, with a pension of fifteen hundred francs. From that lucky moment Scarron led a happy life, spending both income and principal. One day, however, an emissary of the cardinal’s gave him to understand that he was wrong in receiving the coadjutor so often. “And why?” asked Scarron; “is he not a man of good birth?” “Certainly.” “Agreeable?” “Undeniably.” “Witty?” “He has, unfortunately, too much wit.” “Well, then, why do you wish me to give up seeing such a man?” “Because he is an enemy.” “Of whom?” “Of the cardinal.” “What?” answered Scarron, “I continue to receive Monsieur Gilles Despreaux, who thinks ill of _me_, and you wish me to give up seeing the coadjutor, because he thinks ill of another man. Impossible!” The conversation had rested there and Scarron, through sheer obstinacy, had seen Monsieur de Gondy only the more frequently. Now, the very morning of which we speak was that of his quarter-day payment, and Scarron, as usual, had sent his servant to get his money at the pension-office, but the man had returned and said that the government had no more money to give Monsieur Scarron. It was on Thursday, the abbé’s reception day; people went there in crowds. The cardinal’s refusal to pay the pension was known about the town in half an hour and he was abused with wit and vehemence. In the Rue Saint Honoré Athos fell in with two gentlemen whom he did not know, on horseback like himself, followed by a lackey like himself, and going in the same direction that he was. One of them, hat in hand, said to him: “Would you believe it, monsieur? that contemptible Mazarin has stopped poor Scarron’s pension.” “That is unreasonable,” said Athos, saluting in his turn the two cavaliers. And they separated with courteous gestures. “It happens well that we are going there this evening,” said Athos to the vicomte; “we will pay our compliments to that poor man.” “What, then, is this Monsieur Scarron, who thus puts all Paris in commotion? Is he some minister out of office?” “Oh, no, not at all, vicomte,” Athos replied; “he is simply a gentleman of great genius who has fallen into disgrace with the cardinal through having written certain verses against him.” “Do gentlemen, then, make verses?” asked Raoul, naïvely, “I thought it was derogatory.”