_He._--A beating, sir, a beating! No one is beaten in any well-governed town. It is a decent enough trade; plenty of people with fine titles meddle with it. And what the deuce would you have him do with his money, if he is not to have a good table, good company, good wines, handsome women, pleasures of every colour, diversion of every sort? I would as lief be a beggar as possess a mighty fortune without any of these enjoyments. But go back to Racine. He was only good for people who did not know him, and for a time when he had ceased to exist. _I._--Granted, but weigh the good and bad. A thousand years from now he will draw tears, he will be the admiration of men in all the countries of the earth; he will inspire compassion, tenderness, pity. They will ask who he was, and to what land he belonged, and France will be envied. He brought suffering on one or two people who are dead, and in whom we take hardly any interest; we have nothing to fear from his vices or his foibles. It would have been better, no doubt, that he should have received from nature the virtues of a good man, instead of the talents of a great one. He is a tree which made a few other trees planted near him wither up, and which smothered the plants that grew at his feet; but he reared his height to the clouds, and his branches spread far; he lends his shadow to all who came, or come now, or ever shall come, to repose by his majestic trunk; he brought forth fruits of exquisite savour which are renewed again and again without ceasing. We might wish that Voltaire had the mildness of Duclos, the ingenuousness of the Abbe Trublet, the rectitude of the Abbe d'Olivet. But as that cannot be, let us look at the thing on the side of it that is really interesting; let us forget for an instant the point we occupy in space and time, and let us extend our vision over centuries to come, and peoples yet unborn, and distant lands yet unvisited. Let us think of the good of our race: if we are not generous enough, at least let us forgive nature for being wiser than ourselves. If you throw cold water on Greuze's head, very likely you will extinguish his talent along with his vanity. If you make Voltaire less sensitive to criticism, he will lose the art that took him to the inmost depths of the soul of Merope, and will never stir a single emotion in you more. _He._--But if nature be as powerful as she is wise, why did she not make them as good as she made them great? _I._--Do you not see how such reasoning as that overturns the general order, and that if all were excellent here below, then there would be nothing excellent.