And the intention of the pleasantry is pointed by a malicious footnote, to the effect that people who might be surprised that a serious man like Valere should have written works of this licentious and frivolous kind, will conceive that in a moment of leisure a philosopher should write _Les Bijoux Indiscrets_, for instance, and the next day follow it by a treatise on morality,[195]--as Diderot unhappily had done. [195] _Le Satyrique_, iii. p. 84. _note_. Palissot was not so good as Moliere, Boileau, and Pope, as he was fatuous enough to suppose; but he was certainly better than the scribbler who asked-- Mais enfin de quoi se glorifie Ce siecle de mollesse et de Philosophie? Dites-moi: le Francais a-t-il un coeur plus franc Plus prodigue a l'etat de son genereux sang, Plus ardent a venger la plaintive innocence Contre l'iniquite que soutient la puissance? Le Francais philosophe est-il plus respecte Pour la foi, la candeur, l'exacte probite? Ou sont-ils ces Heros, ces vertueux modeles Que l'Encyclopedie a couve sous ses ailes?[196] [196] Metra, vi. 128. Tiresome doggrel of this kind was the strongest retort that the party of obscurantism could muster against the vigour, grace, and sparkle of Voltaire. The great official champions of the old system were not much wiser than their hacks in the press. The churchmen were given over to a blind mind. The great edition of Voltaire's works which Beaumarchais was printing over the frontier at Kehl, excited their anger to a furious pitch. The infamous Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of Strasburg (1781), denounced the publication as sacrilege. The archbishop of Paris (1785) thundered against the monument of scandal and the work of darkness. The archbishop of Vienne forbade the faithful of his diocese to subscribe to it under pain of mortal sin. In the general assembly of the clergy which opened in the summer of 1780, the bishops, in memorials to the king, deplored the homage paid to the famous writer who was "less known for the beauty of his genius and the superiority of his talents, than for the persevering and implacable war which for sixty years he had waged against the Lord and his Christ." They cursed in solemn phrase the "revolting blasphemies" of Raynal's _History of the Indies_, and declared that the publication of a new edition of that celebrated book with the name and the portrait of its author, showed that the most elementary notions of shame and decency lay in profound sleep.