The author of the preceding article is a worthy man who would sup with a Quaker, an Anabaptist, a Socinian, a Mussulman, etc. _I_ would push this civility farther; I would say to my brother the Turk--Let us eat together a good hen with rice, invoking Allah; your religion seems to me very respectable; you adore but one God; you are obliged to give the fortieth part of your revenue every day in alms, and to be reconciled with your enemies on the day of the Bairam. Our bigots, who calumniate the world, have said a hundred times, that your religion succeeded only because it was wholly sensual. They have lied, poor fellows! Your religion is very austere; it commands prayer five times a day; it imposes the most rigorous fast; it denies you the wine and the liquors which our spiritual directors encourage; and if it permits only four wives to those who can support them--which are very few--it condemns by this restriction the Jewish incontinence, which allowed eighteen wives to the homicide David, and seven hundred, without reckoning concubines, to Solomon, the assassin of his brother. I will say to my brother the Chinese: Let us sup together without ceremony, for I dislike grimaces; but I like your law, the wisest of all, and perhaps the most ancient. I will say nearly as much to my brother the Indian. But what shall I say to my brother the Jew? Shall I invite him to supper? Yes, on condition that, during the repast, Balaam's ass does not take it into its head to bray; that Ezekiel does not mix his dinner with our supper; that a fish does not swallow up one of the guests, and keep him three days in his belly; that a serpent does not join in the conversation, in order to seduce my wife; that a prophet does not think proper to sleep with her, as the worthy man, Hosea, did for five francs and a bushel of barley; above all, that no Jew parades through my house to the sound of the trumpet, causes the walls to fall down, and cuts the throats of myself, my father, my mother, my wife, my children, my cat and my dog, according to the ancient practice of the Jews. Come, my friends, let us have peace, and say our _benedicite_. TOPHET. Tophet was, and is still, a precipice near Jerusalem, in the valley of Hinnom, which is a frightful place, abounding only in flints. It was in this dreary solitude that the Jews immolated their children to their god, whom they then called Moloch; for we have observed, that they always bestowed a foreign name on their god. _Shadai_ was Syrian; _Adonai_, Phœnician; _Jehovah_ was also Phœnician; _Eloi_, _Elohim_, _Eloa_, Chaldæan; and in the same manner, the names of all their angels were Chaldæan or Persian. This we have remarked very particularly.