Note 393 — BOOK I[361]
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos translation
François Joachim Cardinal de Pierres de Bernis (1715-1794), Anacreontic poet and religious controversialist. He had been Madame de Pompadour's lover, and owed his advancement to her. Voltaire called him Babet la Bouquetière, owing to the profusion of flowers of rhetoric which he employed in his verses.—T.