Some young courtiers were supping with M. de Conflans. The first song of the evening was broad but not too improper. Immediately thereafter, however, M. de Fronsac rose and sang some abominable couplets which amazed the company, gay as it was. There was a dead silence, broken by M. de Conflans, who observed: “Fronsac, you surprise me! There are ten bottles of champagne between that song and the first.”
A woman of ninety said to M. de Fontenelle, then ninety-five: “Death has forgotten us.” “Hush!” replied M. de Fontenelle, putting his finger to his lips.
To obtain dry weather, it was arranged to have a procession with the shrine of St. Geneviève. Scarcely had the cortege started, however, than it began to rain. On which the Bishop of Castres wittily remarked: “The saint is mistaken—she believes we are asking her for rain.”
I once heard an orthodox person denouncing those who discuss articles of faith. “Gentlemen,” he said naïvely, “a true Christian does not examine what he is ordered to believe. Dogma is like a bitter pill: if you chew it, you will never be able to swallow it.”
M. de —— asked a certain bishop for a country house of his which he never occupied. “Don’t you know,” said the bishop, “that a man ought always to have some place to which he never goes, but where he believes he would be happy?” “Yes,” replied M. de ——, “it is quite true—that is what has made the fortune of Paradise.”