Paul Scarron, French poet, dramatist, novelist and first husband of Madame de Maintenon, was baptized on July 4 1610. His father, of the same name, was a member of the parlement of Paris. Paul the younger became an abbé when he was nineteen, and in 1633 entered the service of Charles de Beaumanoir, bishop of Le Mans, with whom he travelled to Rome in 1635. Finding a patron in Marie de Hautefort, he became a well-known figure in literary and fashionable society. An improbable story is told on the authority of La Beaumelle that—when in residence at his canonry of Le Mans--he once tarred and feathered himself as a carnival freak and, being obliged to...more »