"Try if you can decipher his writing.

One may have very honest sentiments, and a great deal of ESPRIT, and yet write like a cat....
"Sire, there was once a lion and a mouse (RAT); the mouse fell in love with the lion, and went to pay him court.

The lion, tired of it, gave him a little scrape with his paw.

The mouse withdrew into his mouse-hole (SOURICIERE); but he still loved the lion; and seeing one day a net they were spreading out to catch the lion and kill him, he gnawed asunder one mesh of it.

Sire, the mouse kisses very humbly your beautiful claws, in all submissiveness:--he will never die between two Capuchins, as, at Bale, the mastiff (DOGUE) of St.Malo has done [27th July last].