User:Lambic/Louis Casserole
“I'd would have loved to follow Casserole's lessons, if only I had known any French!”
Louis Casserole (born in Paris, 1591, died ib., 1685), dedicated his entire life to his little "école primaire" near the "Petit Châtelet" ("Small Castle") in Paris. This humble but erudite man has had amongst his pupils some of the greatest minds of XVIIth Century France. He was also the private teacher of Louis XIV.
Je pense so I am[edit | edit source]
Louis' least talented but most loudmouthed student was René Descartes, who was "ever so clever", and never stopped pointing at what he thought to be his master's mistakes. He used to begin his remarks with either "Je suis..." ("I am...) or "Je pense..." ("I think..."), and at one historical moment this irritated Louis so much, that he made up a sentence from it, "Je pense donc je suis" ("I think, therefore I am"), and ordered the little smarty to conjugate that in all possible tenses. For example:
- Je pense donc je suis
- Tu penses donc tu es
etcetera. This had quite an unforeseen effect on Descartes' career.
L'état, that's me![edit | edit source]
Nearly every educated person is convinced of Louis XIV having said "L'état, c'est moi" ("The state, that's me!"), thus stating that he and only he ruled in, on, about and over France. But again, it was Louis Casserole who made this sentence up, to punish his future for daydreaming along about his future ruling, instead of paying attention. So he made the young Louis conjugate that sentence in all possible tenses. For example (let's take a past tense, this time):
- L'état, ce sera moi
- L'état, ce sera toi (that one made him giggle)
etcetera. It is clear, that his sentence wasn't as difficult as Descartes' one, but, hey, Kool with the King!
Cleopatra had a big nose[edit | edit source]
Louis Casserole also did a lot of research, and was mainly interested in Egypt. Not only did he punish his uproarious pupil Blaise Pascal with the conjugation in all tenses of the sentence "Le nez de Cléopâtre: s'il eût été plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé" ("If Cleopatra hadn't had such a big nose, the world would have been different today"), which is a statement much more difficult to conjugate than the previous ones together, it was he who hid the tablet Rosetta eventually found. Caserole surely made a lot of trips to Egypt, and had a broad understanding of the hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, the muslim world was still considered a highly hostile one, and he kept shtumm about it.
Moment of glory[edit | edit source]
In 1670, at age 81, his moment of glory finally came, when he was invited to join the "XVII Disciples Oval Table". King Louis arranged that, to make up for his own not attending (and sending the Royal Dolphin instead).
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