Ménippe is a bird decorated with different feathers that don't belong to him. He does not speak, he does not feel; he repeats the feelings and the speech of others, and so naturally takes on their esprit that he is the first one to forget that it is theirs, and he often thinks he is stating his taste or explaining his thought when he is only echoing the person whose company he just left. He is a man who is bearable for fifteen minutes and a moment after that droops, degenerates, loses the little luster that a little memory gave him, and shows he has nothing more left. He is the only one who doesn't see how far he is from sublimity and heroism; and, incapable of imagining how great an esprit men can have, he naively thinks he has as much as is humanly possible: he also has the air and manner of someone who has nothing more to desire of his esprit and who doesn't envy anyone. He talks to himself often and doesn't hide it; the people who pass by see him and he always seems to be taking sides with himself, or deciding that such and such a thing cannot be argued. If you greet him sometimes, you throw him into confusion over whether he should reply to you or not; and while he deliberates, you have already left the room. His vanity made him become something he wasn't. One judges, on seeing him, that he is only occupied with his own person; that he knows that his clothes look good on him, and that his jewels match; that he thinks that everyone's eyes are on him, and that men take turns contemplating him.