the archdeacon one of those congratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom, at that epoch preceded all conversations between learned men, and which did not prevent them from detesting each other in the most cordial manner in the world.

However, it is the same nowadays; every wise man’s mouth complimenting another wise man is a vase of honeyed gall.

Claude Frollo’s f�licitations to Jacques Coictier bore reference principally to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician had found means to extract, in the course of his much envied career, from each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy much better and more certain than the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone.

“In truth, Monsieur l� Docteur Coictier, I felt