Summary: mention, our modern writers, all would have done better to hide their rags, to conceal their penury, as did La Fontaine at court behind velvet coats or as did Molière behind a silver-pointed cane. To boast of one's talent is to boast also of one's poor living — in a word, to boast of nothing. —Cervantes, « Arabella and Constanza », an un- finished story, inserted in the tale of the « Man of the Colour », published in the Second Part of Don Quijote, Madrid, 1615. (1) Ménage, Elymologies of the French Language.