“And how do you make your twelve thousand francs?

By your poems?”

“No, I have given up poetry, except now and then to write a drinking song, some gay sonnet or some innocent epigram; I compose sermons, my friend.”

“What! sermons? Do you preach them?”

“No; I sell them to those of my cloth who wish to become great orators.”

“Ah, indeed! and you have not been tempted by the hopes of reputation yourself?”

“I should, my dear D’Artagnan, have been so, but nature said ‘No.’ When I am in the pulpit, if by chance a pretty woman looks at me, I look at her again: if she smiles,