Constance knew they contained an elaborate and costly layette; so she hurried to her own apartment and wrote in a disguised hand a billet that threw out the worst of insinuations, and as a finale she added a pasquinade copied hastily from some low and bitter lampoon.

But, leaving the pasquinades of other people, let us come back to the sayings of Pasquin himself.

Have you never heard the story of how the king was riding by, where the people were collected at the corner of a street, stretching out their necks to read a pasquinade which had been hung on the wall, and was directed against the king himself?

"But who can the fool be that wrote such pasquinades?" demanded an indignant listener.