“There was in Paris a certain Mr Chateaunières de Grenaille, a native of Limousin, a young man aged 26, who suddenly unleashed a vast number of books, some of which he called l’honnête fille , l’honnête veuve , l’honnête garçon  [1], and the others the bibliotheques des dames . [2] What I found praiseworthy in his book on ladies’ pleasures is that a man of his age had apparently stayed put in his chamber, and had foregone a good deal of debauchery, in order to compose such a work; but for the rest, the good things in them were very few, and what was good had already been said so often that there was no great glory in repeating them. The style was rather dull, and led one to the conclusion that the author wrote simply for the sake of writing. His book on ladies’ pleasures is divided into five parts: On Bouquets , On the Dance , On The Court , On Concerts , and On Refreshments . First he deals with the question whether a bouquet of flowers ornaments a breast or if, on the contrary, it is the bouquet that borrows all its grace from the breast; on which point he decides in favour of the latter, judging that an influence emanates from the two hemispheres of a lady’s bosom that gives life to the bouquet, making it not only beautiful but also longer lasting.

“It is,” Sobière goes on, “from such fine thoughts that he hoped to achieve immortality, having decorated the frontispiece of all of his books with his engraved portrait and the proud inscription: Hec evadimus immortales (In this way a mortal becomes immortal) . [3]

“We will agree to leave you,” he says, “your history of the revolution in Portugal , [5] providing that you remove your portrait, the inscription of which is far too boastful for a writer like yourself. If you had simply mentioned your place of birth, and merely added that you became a monk in Bordeaux, and then discarded the monk’s robe in Agen, we could have put up with it; but you go on to say that you have made yourself immortal in Paris; this is a statement that has nothing of the truth of the three previous ones, and with Apollo’s permission, we will cross it out.”