Paul Scarron

Scarron was the first husband of Françoise d'Aubigné, who later became Madame de Maintenon and secretly married King Louis XIV of France.

Finding a patron in Marie de Hautefort, maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XIII, he became a well-known figure in literary and fashionable society.

According to this story, Scarron, while residing at Le Mans, once tarred and feathered himself as a carnival freak and was obliged to hide in a swamp to escape the wrath of the townspeople.

[1] His upper body became permanently twisted and his legs were paralyzed; he was obliged to use a wheelchair, and began taking copious amounts of opium to relieve his pain.

Adding to his misfortunes, he became involved in a series of lawsuits with his stepmother over his father's property,[1] as well as being obliged to support his sisters financially.

[1] In 1649 a penniless lady of good family, Céleste de Palaiseau, kept his house in the Rue d'Enfer, and tried to reform the habits of Scarron and his circle.

[1] In 1652, he married the impoverished but beautiful Françoise d'Aubigné,[1] afterwards famous as Madame de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV.

In the end the reader is able to unveil many of the mysteries of the novel and the relationship between the heroic material from the past and the comic adventures of the present since L'Estoile is the noble Leonore in disguise.

[3] The novel also borrows some of its humor (partially embodied in Ragotin) from Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote as well as from Menippean satire.